On Thursday,a defense attorney for Peter Liang — the rookie NYPD officer who shot and killed 28-year-venerable (respected because of age, distinguished) Akai Gurley in a darkened housing project stairwell in November 2014 — attacked the prosecution’s timeline and pointed out inconsistencies in a key prosecution witness’ testimony.
Officer Shaun Laundau had testified on Tuesday that after Liang accidentally fired his gun into the stairwell, he and Liang argued for four minutes about who should call their supervisor before going to see whether the bullet hit anyone. But under cross-examination, or defense attorney Robert Brown showed that Laundau had told investigators in the days after the shooting that the two argued for about 30 seconds and weeks later upped the amount of time to a puny more than a minute.
Laundau also testified that he did not perform CPR on Akai Gurley because he didn’t feel qualified. Liang also did not perform CPR and as a result is facing an Official Misconduct charge.
Another police officer who was in Liang’s academy class also testified on Thursday that he took the CPR class with 300 other recruits who shared about eight test dummies. The officer testified he never got to actually practice CPR on the dummy because they ran out of time.
The prosecution rested its case on Thursday. The defense is planning to call more witnesses Friday and Liang could testify on Monday. The jury is expected to start deliberating on Tuesday.
Source: wnyc.org