The partner of the NYPD officer who accidentally shot and killed an unarmed man in a darkened stairwell last year testified Tuesday that the cop lamented "I'm fired" after the fatal shooting, while the 28-year-old victim's girlfriend sobbed as she described watching him bleed to death.
The pair's testimonies marked a busy day in the trial of NYPD officer Peter Liang, the cop charged with criminally negligent homicide in the November 2014 shooting death of Akai Gurley in a darkened staircase of a Brooklyn housing project.
Liang's partner, Shaun Landau testified that afternoon, recalling going into the darkened stairwell at the Pink Houses in East New York on Nov. 20, 2014. He said that Liang went in the stairwell with his flashlight in one hand, and gun in the other. Suddenly, Landau said, a shot went off.
"I was in shock," he said. "The gun just fired out of nowhere."
He said that after the shooting, Liang said "I'm fired," and the pair had a four-minute conversation about who should call their supervisor.
They didn't go in the darkened stairwell, where Gurley was on the ground bleeding while girlfriend Melissa Butler, 28, tried to help him.
She testified before Landau on Tuesday, recounting how she performed CPR on Gurley.
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"I leaned over him in a puddle of blood," Butler said through tears at the trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court Tuesday. "And told him to stay with me I'm getting help.”
Butler had been dating Gurley for about three years prior to the night he was killed. She said she and Gurley took the stairs in the Pink Houses that night because the elevator was not working. The stairwell, she said, was totally dark.
"The door opened,” Butler said about the scene of the shooting. "I heard it hit the wall...a shot went off,” she said.
"I heard a shot...a muzzled burst...[I] ran down...he ran down too."
The trial will continue Wednesday.
