Not-guilty plea by NYC officer

NEW YORK - A rookie police officer pleaded not guilty Wednesday to manslaughter, official misconduct, and other charges in the shooting death of a man in a pitch black stairwell of a Brooklyn public housing complex.

Officer Peter Liang appeared briefly in a Brooklyn courtroom as the charges, which also include criminally negligent homicide and assault, were unsealed in the death of 28-year-old Akai Gurley. Liang's attorney, Stephen Worth, maintained the shooting was an accident. The officer was released without bail.

Gurley was killed on Nov. 20 while visiting the Louis Pink Houses, a public housing complex in the East New York neighborhood, to get his hair braided. Liang, who had been an officer for about 18 months, and his partner were patrolling the complex where reports of violent crime had spiked.

The stairwell was completely dark and Liang had his gun drawn as they descended onto an eighth-floor landing, prosecutors said. Meanwhile, Gurley opened the door into the seventh-floor landing after giving up his wait for an elevator. Liang, gun in his left hand and a flashlight in his right, fired a shot, prosecutors said. The bullet ricocheted and struck Gurley in the chest, who made it down two flights of stairs before collapsing.

Assistant District Attorney Mark Fliedner told a judge that absent any clear threat, Liang was supposed to keep his weapon pointed down with his finger off the trigger.

Immediately after the shooting, Fliedner said, Liang and his partner retreated to the eighth floor and argued over whether to report that Liang had discharged his weapon instead of rendering aid.

"It was an accident. I'm going to be fired," his partner recalled Liang saying, according to court documents.