The rookie NYPD cop who gunned down unarmed Akai Gurley in a poorly lit stairwell in Brooklyn public housing cried on the stand Monday as he recalled his deadly mistake.
Officer Peter Liang needed a roughly one-minute break from testimony in Brooklyn Supreme Court as he was grilled about the botched vertical patrol in the Pink Houses on Nov. 20, 2014.
“I heard someone crying, I ran down one flight…another flight…I saw Mr. Gurley there,” said Liang, his voice cracking.
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“I said, ‘Oh my God, someone is hit,'” he added, rubbing his eyes with a tissue and turning away to hide his tears.
Judge Danny Chun excused Liang from the witness stand to compose himself before the defense resumed its questioning.
Liang says his gun went off my accident. The bullet ricocheted off a wall and struck Gurley, the father of a 2-year-old girl.
“I heard something on my left side…It startled me (then) the gun just went off,” Liang said during two hours of testimony.
“It looked like he was seriously injured. His eyes were rolled back. He was laying there very still…I was panicking. I was shocked. I was in disbelief that someone was actually hit.”
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Sylvia Palmer, Gurley’s mother, said she felt no sympathy for the officer after watching him weep on the witness stand.
“I (would) have sympathy for him if he only apologized,” she said. “I would have believed it was an accident. But he did not, he shows no remorse for what he’s done and it bothers me.”
Liang testified he’d done “hundreds” of vertical patrols in which officers walk the stairwells of public housing. The lights were out in the stairwell on the 7th floor the night of the tragedy — a longstanding complaint among residents.
“It was pitch black…so I took my weapon out and my flashlight out,” he said, adding that his trigger finger “was on the side of the weapon along the frame.”
“I’ve done hundreds of verticals and this is how I always do it,” he told the jury during questioning from the defense. “There’s never been a problem.”
“It’s our discretion when to take out our firearms…there was no set rule when to take your weapon out.”
Liang explained that the stairwells were “high-crime areas” where he needed to be on alert.
“When you fear for you and your partner’s safety, you would take your weapon out…When approaching these areas, I feel I need to take my gun out,” he said.
After pulling the trigger Liang phoned his sergeant instead of calling in the incident over the radio. Under intense questioning from prosecutor Joseph Alexis, Liang insisted he hadn’t realized Gurley had been shot.
“You know that when a call is put over the radio it’s taped, right?” Alexis asked Liang, who quietly responded, “Yes.”
“I thought a bullet just went off and hit the wall, that’s it,” Liang said. “It’s unnecessary to have everyone come over…I thought I can handle this through my cell phone. This was my thought process at the time.
“It was an accidental discharge, I didn’t want to alert everyone,” Liang explained.
Liang’s partner, Officer Shaun Landau, testified last week he didn’t try to save Gurley, 28, after realizing he’d been shot because he lacked confidence in his training to perform CPR.
Liang said he also doubted his training. Gurley’s distraught friend Melissa Butler tried to perform CPR on him, instead.
“I didn’t know if I could do it better than her,” Liang said, admitting that “there was nothing stopping me” from attempting to resuscitate Gurley.
Liang told the court he “sort of” received CPR training at the Police Academy, but that he “never actually had a chance to touch a dummy.”
Given his lack of training, he said, he thought it was best to “get professional medical help” for Gurley.
Liang and Landau had only been in the building at 2724 Linden Blvd. three minutes when Liang pulled the trigger.
Liang faces manslaughter and other charges.
Palmer dismissed Liang’s claim the shooting was an accident, saying it was murder.
“The sadness, the emptiness in my heart, the emotional depression is still overwhelming. It hurts,” Palmer said.
