A startled NYPD officer “chose” to fire his gun inside the housing-project stairwell where he killed an unarmed man — then callously tried to cover-up what he’d done, a Brooklyn prosecutor told jurors Tuesday.
“This was not just an accident,” prosecutor Joseph Alexis said in his closing arguments in the criminal trial of Officer Peter Liang, 28.
“He chose to point his gun. He chose to put his finger on the trigger, to fire the gun.”
In his strongly worded closing, he said Liang knew the unarmed Akai Gurley, 28, was in the Pink Houses stairwell after the shot rang out.
“He’s not telling you the truth when he says he didn’t hear the running,” Alexis insisted. “He knew people were there.”
The bullet ricocheted off a wall and pierced Gurley’s heart.
Liang, 28, who has insisted he didn’t immediately know his errant bullet struck anyone, delayed radioing for help because he wanted cover up his error, Alexis charged.
“Peter Liang said he went back in, and he was telling the truth,” the prosecutor argued. “He went into the stairwell to pick up that shell casing, so he could keep this secret.”
Before deliberations, Justice Danny Chun dropped one of the lesser charges of official misconduct against Liang.
It related to the cop not aiding Gurley in the stairwell.
“[The] people didn’t satisfy their burden on that count,” Chun said. “There’s no language in the constitution that says it is a police officer’s duty to render aid.”
Liang’s fate is in the hands of 12 jurors deliberating on five remaining charges, including the top counts of second-degree manslaughter and reckless assault, plus reckless endangerment, criminally negligent homicide and official misconduct. He faces up to 15 years in prison.
Liang made a “reckless and deadly choice” when he pulled out his service weapon during a routine housing patrol, then fired the gun after hearing a sound in the stairwell.
“He didn’t trip in the dark, there wasn’t a bump in the night,” Alexis said. “On Nov. 20, he shot and killed Akai Gurley for no reason,” Alexis insisted.
“Peter Liang was in the darkened stairwell, and instead of pointing his flashlight at the noise, he pointed his gun at it, and he shot Akai Gurley.”
During his own testimony, Liang had suggested his gun “just went off” after he tensed up.
At one point, Alexis aimed Liang’s service weapon toward the floor and pulled the trigger, the click echoing in the courtroom.
Liang’s defense attorney also wielded the weapon, showing jurors how easy it would be for a “flinch” to cause his client’s finger to slip from its frame to the trigger.
“What evidence have you heard that he burst into the stairwell with his finger on the trigger?” defense lawyer Robert Brown asked jurors, calling the case “smoke and mirrors” propped up by “red herrings.”
“The prosecution’s case is a lot of pounding the table,” he said.
“Is what my client did a gross deviation of what a police officer in the same situation would have done?” he asked jurors.
“Everyone I asked said they would have taken their guns out.”
The cop didn’t administer CPR to Gurley because he wasn’t properly trained, Brown said.
He also tried to cast doubt on the testimony of Melissa Butler, Gurley’s girlfriend, who’d testified that the vitim’s right side was facing the 8th floor landing, where Liang fired from, but he’d turned just before they heard the shot.
“I think that Ms. Butler’s perception was thrown off,” Brown said, pointing at a diagram showing the trajectory of Liang’s bullet, and where it ricocheted off a wall in the stairwell.
“It could not have happened the way she said. He would have been shot in the right side of his body, not his left.”
His attempts to walk the jury through the individual charges against Liang were met with repeated and dramatic objections by prosecutors.