The
police officer who fired the shot that killed an unarmed man in a
Brooklyn housing project in November has been indicted, according to
three people familiar with the grand jury proceedings.
Peter Liang, 27, who had been on the force for less than 18 months,
was patrolling a darkened stairwell at the Louis H. Pink Houses in East
New York when he shot and killed Akai Gurley, 28. Less than 12 hours
after the shooting, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton acknowledged
that the shooting had been a grave error.
A
formal announcement by the district attorney’s office was expected on
Wednesday afternoon, but whether the indictment against Officer Liang
includes any homicide counts, such as manslaughter, could not be
immediately determined.
When
Officer Liang and his partner entered an eighth-floor stairwell in the
building, he had his gun drawn, according to the police. At nearly the
same moment, Mr. Gurley and his girlfriend entered the seventh-floor
stairwell, 14 steps below.
The
charges, reported by NY1 on Tuesday afternoon, come two months after a
grand jury on Staten Island declined to bring criminal charges against
Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner, who died after an
encounter with the police.
It
came at a time of heightened tension between the police and minority
communities and was one of several cases that advocates for police
reform cited as evidence of overly aggressive police tactics.
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