The criminal trial of a New York Police Department sergeant who killed a Bronx man with a cooler as he was fleeing arrest on a motorbike will begin on Wednesday.
The sergeant, Erik Duran, 38, is the first New York City police officer in nearly a decade to be tried for killing someone while on duty. A grand jury indicted him in 2024 on charges of manslaughter, assault and criminally negligent homicide in the death of the man, Eric Duprey, a 30-year-old delivery worker.
He is being prosecuted by the New York attorney general’s office, which investigates civilian deaths during encounters with law enforcement officers. Since 2015, when the office began prosecuting such cases, no charges against an on-duty New York City police officer have led to a conviction.
Sergeant Duran’s trial will be the latest test for how the state judicial system handles such cases. In New York City, it is rare that an officer is criminally charged in a civilian death and even more rare for the charges to lead to a conviction.
His lawyers are expected to argue that he made a split-second decision that potentially saved lives. Prosecutors are expected to present evidence that Sergeant Duran’s actions were an egregious use of force that warrants prison time.
The case will be a bench trial in Bronx Supreme Court, meaning a judge, not a jury, will decide his guilt. He faces a maximum sentence of 25 years behind bars if he is convicted of manslaughter.
Prosecutors said that on Aug. 23, 2023, around 5 p.m., Sergeant Duran and other undercover narcotics officers arrived at Aqueduct Avenue near West 192nd Street to carry out a buy-and-bust, an operation to catch unsuspecting drug dealers.
According to Sergeant Duran’s union lawyer, Andrew C. Quinn, Mr. Duprey sold drugs to one of the undercover officers. When they moved in to arrest him, Mr. Duprey, who was sitting on a motorbike, revved the engine and sped off.
Mr. Duprey rode toward the corner of West 190th Street and swerved onto the sidewalk near a picnic table, according to Mr. Quinn and an initial account provided by the police. At 5:28 p.m., Sergeant Duran grabbed a white plastic cooler from the table and “forcefully threw” it at Mr. Duprey, striking him in the head, according to prosecutors and a video of the episode.
The blow caused Mr. Duprey to lose control of the scooter, prosecutors said, and he then rammed into a tree, was tossed off the bike and smacked his head on the curb. Emergency medical workers arrived at 5:31 p.m., according to the police and Fire Department officials. Mr. Duprey was pronounced dead four minutes later.
“Nobody deserves to die like that,” said Pearl Velez, Mr. Duprey’s partner of nine years and the mother of two of his three children, a 5-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl. “I hope we’re going to get justice. It’s not right.”
Mr. Duprey’s death occurred at a time when the Police Department was embracing more aggressive tactics to deal with what the police described as quality-of-life issues. Department leaders under Eric Adams, the mayor at the time, ordered officers to remove mopeds and motorbikes that were illegally parked, and to chase those they found careening down city streets.
The police said that shootings and robbery patterns had also been connected to people on motorbikes and mopeds.
But Mr. Adams, a former police officer, criticized Sergeant Duran’s actions, calling Mr. Duprey’s death a “terrible incident.”
“That’s not a policy that we use, throwing a cooler,” Mr. Adams said at the time.
Sergeant Duran, who has been with the Police Department for 16 years, is currently suspended with pay pending the outcome of his criminal trial, as required by civil service law, according to a police spokesman.
Apart from the killing of Mr. Duprey, he has faced 18 allegations of misconduct in six different cases, according to data from the Civilian Complaint Review Board, a city police oversight agency. Of those allegations, one was substantiated.
Mr. Quinn has said that Sergeant Duran was protecting people in the area from Mr. Duprey’s reckless driving.
“What is indisputably clear is that the deceased, who was intent on evading arrest for selling drugs to an undercover officer, was speeding on a motorbike in an incredibly dangerous manner,” Mr. Quinn said.
Vincent Vallelong, the president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, the union that represents Sergeant Duran, said the defendant had served the city “with an unwavering dedication to public safety.”
“We firmly believe that when the facts are fully presented in this case, he will be exonerated of these charges,” Sergeant Vallelong added.
Mr. Duprey’s younger brother, Ryan Rodriguez, disputed the police’s account in an interview with The New York Times in 2023.
Mr. Rodriguez said he and his brother were on the sidewalk, “chilling and smoking, the same thing we do every day,” when a group of police officers approached Mr. Duprey as he sat on the motorbike.
Mr. Rodriguez said his brother had fled because the scooter was not registered.
Moments later, Mr. Rodriguez said, the sergeant “picked up the cooler and just smashed it on his face.”
The last time a New York City police officer went on trial for killing a person, Mr. Quinn was also the defendant’s lawyer.
In 2016, he represented Hugh Barry, a sergeant who was charged with murder in the fatal shooting of a mentally ill Bronx woman. Mr. Barry was acquitted in 2018, and, more than five years later, was forced to resign.
Ms. Velez, Mr. Duprey’s partner, said her children are now terrified of the police. Her daughter, who was 5 when Mr. Duprey died, cries on her birthday and on Christmas because she misses him, Ms. Velez said.
“She’s struggling,” Ms. Velez said. “She’s trying to be strong. You see her and she says, ‘No, I’m good.’ But you can see it. She’s not a happy little girl like all the girls.”
Chelsia Rose Marcius is a criminal justice reporter for The Times, covering the New York Police Department.
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