New York City will pay more than $4 million to settle a lawsuit filed after one of its police officers fatally shot an unarmed black man inside the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project nearly two years ago, officials said Monday.
The settlement, first reported by the Daily News, will resolve a wrongful death claim brought after 28-year-old Akai Gurley was shot and killed by a rookie New York Police Department officer inside the Louis H. Pink Houses on Nov. 20, 2014.
Gurley and his girlfriend Kimberly Ballinger were on the seventh-floor landing of the housing complex where they lived when an NYPD officer startled by their presence accidentally discharged his 9mm handgun. The bullet ricocheted off the stairwell wall and struck Gurley in the chest, killing him within minutes. The officer who fired the shot, Peter Liang, was found guilty of manslaughter earlier this year.
A spokesperson for the New York City Law Department told NBC News that Gurley’s family will receive $4.1 million from the city, $400,000 from the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and $25,000 from Liang to settle the wrongful death suit.
“We believe this is a fair resolution of a tragic matter,” a law department spokesman said in an emailed statement to the network.
The funds will be put aside for Gurley’s daughter until she turns 18, said Scott Rynecki, an attorney representing Ms. Ballinger, the mother of Gurley’s daughter.
Ms. Ballinger “only hopes that she can now move on and raise their daughter to become a woman and a person Akai would be proud of,” she told the New York Post.
The lawsuit accused Liang of acting “negligently and recklessly” by failing to promptly summon medical help in the aftermath of the shooting and faulted the housing authority for failing to keep the stairwell adequately lit.
Four months after Eric Garner of Staten Island died while in NYPD custody — and two days before 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer while brandishing a toy gun at a playground — Gurley’s death further fueled protests in New York City and elsewhere intended to draw attention to acts of violence being committed against African-Americans by law enforcement.
In April, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun downgraded Liang’s manslaughter conviction to criminally negligent homicide and sentenced him to probation plus 800 hours of community service.
There is “no evidence, either direct or circumstantial, that the defendant was aware of Akai Gurley’s presence and therefore disregarded any risk [to him],’’ the judge said.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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