An NYPD sergeant on trial for fatally hurling a drink cooler at a scooter-riding drug suspect took the stand to defend himself Monday — testifying he was trying to save other officers’ lives at the time.
“I thought he was going to kill my guys,” Sgt. Erik Duran said on the stand in Bronx Supreme Court, where he is charged with manslaughter for causing the Aug. 23, 2023, death of Eric Duprey.
“He was going so fast he’s gonna crash right into them,” Duran, 38, said.
The officer had been supervising an undercover buy-and-bust operation on Aqueduct Avenue near West 190th Street in Kingsbridge Heights when prosecutors charge he recklessly grabbed the full Igloo cooler and chucked it at Duprey, 30, as he fled the scene on on his motorized scooter.
After being struck, Duprey crashed into a tree and was flung from the bike, cracking his head on the pavement and dying almost immediately on impact.
But Duran claimed that Duprey had targeted police officers by riding his scooter toward them on the sidewalk.
“At some point while I was going to grab that cooler, I noticed it was the suspect… he looked right through me,” Duran testified.
“He was riding so fast and he was braced. He was ready for impact.”
Wearing a charcoal suit and navy tie, Duran testified that he immediately tried to render aid on the dying suspect after the crash.
“If I was talking to him. I said, ‘Can you hear me? Can you hear me?’ And then I started to notice his injury, and he was in bad shape. And I immediately yelled out, ‘Get a bus. Get a bus. Rush the bus, now. Rush the bus.
“I started to try to feel for a pulse. I had my left hand on his torso, and I saw more blood start coming out,” Duran testified.
“I was in shock, I was upset, and I was hoping that I was wrong about what I saw with his injuries, I’m just hoping that I was wrong. I was hoping that somebody at some point would say he’s okay… I was just hoping that I was wrong.”
Duran is the first NYPD officer to go on trial for killing someone on duty since a 2021 law came on the books requiring the State Attorney General’s Office to probe deaths at the hands of police.
Prosecutors with AG Letitia James’ office grilled him on cross examination about whether he needed to use deadly force to defuse the situation, rather than just step out of the way and warn his colleagues to do the same.
“Yeah, I could have gotten out of the way,” Duran admitted on the stand.
“If you could step out of the way, if they knew what was coming, they could step out of the way too, right?” asked prosecutor Joseph Bianco.
The sergeant claimed that his fellow officers were facing the other way, and that he did not have time to alert them about the bike zooming toward them.
“The only time that I had to think was how to get that motorcycle to stop going at that speed to hit my guys,” he testified.
Duran also appeared to try to downplay the impact of the cooler by claiming that it wasn’t “heavy,” despite evidence presented at trial that it was packed with drinks and ice to the brim.
“No, it wasn’t heavy,” he insisted.
Closing statements were set for Tuesday. The case is being heard without a jury and Bronx Supreme Court Justice Guy Mitchell will decide the verdict.
Duran faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted of the top charge of second-degree manslaughter, thought the judge could also find him guilty of a lesser rap of criminally negligent homicide, which carries a max of four years behind bars.