Mayor hopes verdict in cop’s case brings closure

Peter Liang, the rookie cop who fatally shot Akai Gurley in a stairwell a year ago in a NY public housing building, has been found guilty of manslaughter.

Last year, Ken Thompson, the Brooklyn district attorney, said that that his office conducted “a thorough investigation” into the shooting before a grand jury returned a six-count indictment charging Liang with second-degree manslaughter as well as negligent homicide, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct.

The 28-year-old Liang said he fired by accident after a noise startled him.

Even after the conviction, some uncertainty lingers in the case, as a judge had yet to rule on a request from Liang’s lawyers to dismiss the charges, the Associated Press noted.

Liang fired his weapon in a dark stairwell of a housing project in Brooklyn on November 20, 2014.

Deliberations resume Thursday morning.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, said he respected the jury’s decision and hoped it would bring Gurley’s family some sense of finality.

Prosecutors said Liang was reckless and did little to help Gurley. “My child was murdered in cold blood by an inexperienced rookie police officer”, Gurley’s mother, Sylvia Palmer, told CNN. Sentencing for Liang will happen on April 14, at which point he could be heading to prison for up to 15 years. After entering a dimly lit staircase, Liang fired his gun the same time as Gurley and his girlfriend Melissa Butler entered from a higher floor. “This was a bad and tragic accident and not a crime”, said PBA President Patrick Lynch.

Throughout the trial Liang’s defense repeatedly called such a strike “a million to one”, both due to the fact that the bullet bounced off a wall and the likelihood of someone walking in the stairwell at exactly that time.

The officer’s supporters have said Liang, who is Chinese American, is being made a scapegoat for previous injustices.

Liang testified it was an accident, an instantaneous reaction to having been alarmed.

Jurors asked that the testimony of Liang and other witnesses be read back. “I was panicking. I was shocked and in disbelief that someone was hit”, said Liang, who said he was so overcome that he needed oxygen as he was taken to a hospital for ringing in his ears.

But reports say that instead of calling for help, Liang texted his union representative. Outrage over police shootings or excessive force has spurred protest movements in major cities such as Chicago, Baltimore and NY. “I just turned, and the gun went off”, he testified.

Gurley, whose family relocated to the United States from St Thomas when he was a baby, landed in the neighborhood’s Louis Pink houses in 2010 when he moved in with girlfriend Kimberly Ballinger.