A New York City police sergeant charged with manslaughter testified on Monday that he was trying to save the lives of his fellow officers when he threw a cooler at a Bronx man in 2023.
The sergeant, Erik Duran, 38, said he was not trying to hurt Eric Duprey, 30, when he hurled a red Igloo cooler full of ice, water and sodas at him on that August afternoon. Mr. Duprey had just sold drugs to an undercover officer and appeared to be fleeing on a motorbike.
“I didn’t have time to think,” Sergeant Duran, who has pleaded not guilty, said on Monday during his bench trial before Judge Guy Mitchell in Bronx Supreme Court. He was testifying in his own defense, a strategy that is usually discouraged by defense lawyers.
“I thought he was going to kill my guys, he was going so fast,” Sergeant Duran said. “He was going to crash right into them.”
Sergeant Duran is the first New York City police officer in nearly a decade to be tried for killing someone while on duty. He is facing charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the death of Mr. Duprey, a father of three who lived in Bronx.
The sergeant, who grew up in the Bronx and had worked in the Police Department’s drug unit for about a year before the incident, 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, who decided against having his case heard by a jury, was the last person to testify in the 10-day trial. Judge Mitchell will decide the case after the closing arguments, which are expected to happen on Tuesday.
The sergeant’s lawyers called him to the stand, where, dressed in a dark gray suit, he insisted that he had felt an obligation to protect the two detectives who were next to him, arresting another man who they initially believed was Mr. Duprey.
After hitting Mr. Duprey with the cooler, Sergeant Duran said, he saw Mr. Duprey lose control of his bike and crash into a parked Jeep. The sergeant rushed over and asked him how he was; there was no response, and he feared Mr. Duprey was dead.
“I was just hoping that I was wrong about what I saw,” Sergeant Duran said. “I was hoping that someone, at some point, would say that he’s OK.”
It is highly unusual for defendants to testify because they risk incriminating themselves, particularly on cross-examination, and because the burden of proof is on the prosecution; defendants are not required to prove their innocence.
Joseph Bianco, one of two prosecutors from Attorney General Letitia James’s office, challenged Sergeant Duran’s assertion that the only way he could see to stop Mr. Duprey from hurting someone was to grab the cooler and throw it.
“You testified that you yourself could have moved out of the way,” Mr. Bianco said during cross-examination.
“Yeah, I could have moved out of the way,” Sergeant Duran said.
Mr. Bianco then asked Sergeant Duran if he had warned his fellow officers about the motorbike he saw hurtling toward them.
Sergeant Duran said he had not had time to do that.
“But what you did have time to do is to take two steps forward down that sidewalk” and pick up the cooler, Mr. Bianco said.
He then asked the sergeant when he knew that his decision to throw the cooler had resulted in Mr. Duprey’s death.
“I know he’s dead when I have him in my arms and I’m trying to render aid,” Sergeant Duran said.
Maria Cramer is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and crime in the city and surrounding areas.
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