An NYPD sergeant was convicted of manslaughter Friday for fatally hurling a drink cooler at a scooter-riding suspect leaving the scene of a chaotic undercover drug sting in the Bronx.
Sgt. Erik Duran, 38, was found guilty of causing the Aug. 23, 2023, death of Eric Duprey — becoming the first NYPD officer found guilty of a crime for killing someone while on duty in a decade.
Judge Guy Mitchell announced the verdict Friday afternoon inside a courtroom packed with Bronx cops on one side of the gallery, and a mix of Duprey’s relatives, friends and activists on the other side of the room. Court officers formed a wall in the aisle to separate the two sides.
Wearing a charcoal gray suit, Duran stared down at the defense table as the ruling was revealed. Duprey’s mother, Gretchen Soto, and his partner Pearl Velez, the mother of his two kids, burst into tears in the courtroom gallery.
“I never lost faith. I always was, you know…that justice is going to happen,” Velez told reporters afterward.
Duprey’s supporters filed into the hallway after the verdict was announced, where they broke into cheers, yelling, “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” and chanting, “Power to the people!”
Duran, his lawyers and the large group of officers — some sporting “Bronx Narcotics” NYPD jackets — left the room minutes later. Several of the officers were then seen shaking their heads.
The verdict comes after Duran took the stand in his own defense and claimed to have thrown the full Igloo cooler to protect other officers he said Duprey was zooming toward on the motorized scooter.
“I thought he was going to kill my guys,” Duran testified during the three-week Bronx Supreme Court trial.
But the judge rejected that explanation Friday, finding that Duran was not entitled to use deadly force by throwing the cooler at Duprey.
“After consideration of all evidence, the people proved beyond all reasonable doubt that this defendant was not justified,” the judge said from the bench.
After being struck in the arm by the cooler, Duprey crashed into a tree and was flung from the bike, cracking his head on the pavement and dying almost immediately on impact.
Duran had opted for a bench trial, decided by a judge rather than a Bronx jury.
Prosecutors from New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ office had argued that Duran was criminally reckless, pointing the judge to the video showing Duprey pick up the cooler with both hands and chuck it at the fleeing Duran.
“It is such a gross deviation from the standard of care that you would expect from a reasonable person,” said prosecutor Joseph Bianco during closing arguments.
Duran had been overseeing an undercover buy-and-bust operation on the day of Duprey’s death inside a park on Aqueduct Avenue near West 190th Street in Kingsbridge Heights. Duprey had sold $20 worth of cocaine to an undercover officer before taking off from the scene, trial testimony revealed.
Duran faces up to 15 years in prison on the second-degree manslaughter rap when he’s sentenced on March 19. He was released on an increased $500,000 bond until then, and has until Tuesday to pony up the collateral.
He was the first NYPD officer to go on trial for killing someone on duty since a 2015 law came on the books requiring the State Attorney General’s Office to probe deaths at the hands of police.
The Bronx sergeant was represented at trial by lawyers working with his union, the Sergeant’s Benevolent Association — which claimed Friday that the verdict was a “miscarriage of justice.”
“We vigorously maintain Sergeant Duran’s innocence,” SBA president Vincent Vallelong said in a statement. “The verdict rendered by Judge Mitchell is clearly against the weight of the credible evidence.”
“Verdicts such as this send a terrible message to hard-working cops: Should you use force to defend yourself, your fellow police officers or the citizens of the city, no matter how justified your actions, you risk criminal charges and conviction,” Vallelong added.
The last officer to be convicted for an on-duty killing was Peter Liang, a rookie cop who in 2016 was found guilty of manslaughter for fatally shooting unarmed Akai Gurley in a darkened public housing stairwell.
Liang was sentenced to five years of probation and 800 hours of community service.
