Commissioner Bill Bratton describes death of Akai Gurley, 28, who was shot and killed in a housing block in Brooklyn, as ‘a very unfortunate tragedy’

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

An unarmed man shot dead by a New York City police officer in a public housing block in Brooklyn on Thursday evening was “totally innocent”, the city’s police commissioner said on Friday.

Bill Bratton spoke at press conference in New York on Friday. The man who was shot dead has been named in reports as 28-year-old Akai Gurley.

“What happened last night was a very unfortunate tragedy. The deceased is totally innocent. He just happened to be in the hallway. He was not engaged in any criminal activity,” Bratton said.

Police say two officers were conducting a “vertical patrol” in the Pink Houses complex in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn. Bratton said one officer, reportedly with 18 months’ experience on the job, appeared to have accidentally fired on a darkened stairwell between the seventh and eighth floors.

The shot hit Gurley in the chest, according to a statement from police. He was pronounced dead at Brookdale hospital.

Gurley was reported to have been walking down the stairwell with his girlfriend, 27-year-old Melissa Butler, at 11.15pm.



“As soon as he came in, the police opened the [door to the] eighth-floor staircase,” Butler told news site DNAinfo.

“They didn’t present themselves or nothing and shot him. They didn’t identify themselves at all. They just shot.”

The couple then descended a further two flights of stairs, according to an account published in the New York Times.

Butler’s sister Janice said Gurley had been in the apartment on the eighth floor of the building for several hours, getting his hair braided. He did not live in the block.

Bratton said the officer who fired the fatal shot would be interviewed by the district attorney’s office. The NYPD’s internal affairs department is investigating the incident.