Peter Liang is escorted out of court in Brooklyn after being charged with manslaughter, official misconduct and other offenses on February 11, 2015. View Full Caption Spencer Platt/Getty Images

CHINATOWN — The rookie police officer accused of fatally shooting an unarmed man in East New York last year is raising money to hire new lawyers ahead of his trial, set to start next year.

Peter Liang — who faces manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and other charges for fatally shooting 28-year-old Akai Gurley in a dark stairwell last year — and his mother, Nancy Liang, hope to raise $150,000 in donations so she can hire a private attorney to represent her son, instead of relying on the firm retained by the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, Chinese-language media reported last week.

“My son is innocent. An accident shouldn’t destroy his whole life,” she said at the Nov. 9 press conference hosted by Chinese Action Network in Chinatown, according to a translation of a World Journal article by Voices of New York.

Liang accidentally fired a single shot from the landing above Gurley while conducting a vertical patrol with his gun drawn, prosecutors said. The shot ricocheted off a concrete wall and hit Gurley, who was unarmed, in the chest.

The Liangs’ contact information was not immediately available.

With the help of the Chinese Action Network, an advocacy group, the Liangs set up a GoFundMe page, that raised $400 before it was taken down Tuesday for violating the website's terms of service, according to the group's founder, Karlin Chan.

The website announced in April it would not allow "[c]ampaigns in defense of formal charges or claims of heinous crimes, violent, hateful, sexual or discriminatory acts." Chan said they were planning to raise money through another crowdfunding site.

The New York Chinese Freemasons Athletic Club is also accepting checks and money orders on the family’s behalf.

Nancy Liang said they were seeking new representation because she worried the attorney hired by the PBA “wouldn’t help her son wholeheartedly,” according to the World Journal.

But Nancy Liang, who emigrated from China 30 years ago, and her son, who still has outstanding student loans, cannot afford to pay a private attorney on their own, World Journal reported.

“The PBA lawyers are fine but it’s a major charge…He’s better served by a private counsel,” Chan told DNAinfo New York.

Worth, Longworth, & London, LLP, which represents the PBA, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The city’s Chinese-American community has been split in its reaction to Liang’s indictment, according to reports.

Chan said many community members believe Liang has been scapegoated in order to calm the protests sparked by the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner on Staten Island late last year.

But other Asian groups and individuals have expressed support for Gurley and his family, saying that Liang should be held accountable for his actions.

A judge set Liang’s trail date for Jan. 7, according to the New York Post.