Honduran Diplomat Assails NYC Police in Shooting of Unarmed Black Man

From the NY Times [HERE] and [HERE]

FAMILY DEMANDS COP'S ARREST
Appearing at a sidewalk memorial for an unarmed driver shot dead by an off-duty officer in the Bronx, the senior Honduran diplomat in New York criticized the police yesterday, saying, “We are not going to let this go by unnoticed.”

“The police cannot shoot crazily or indiscriminately,” said Javier Hernández, the consul general, who said he had been living in New York for 19 years. “Before, there was courtesy, now there is intimidation, and I think it should be the other way around,” Mr. Hernández said. Like the driver, Fermin Arzu, many residents of the Longwood neighborhood, where the shooting occurred, are Honduran immigrants.

The Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau continued its investigation yesterday into the death of Mr. Arzu, 41, on Friday night. The Bronx district attorney’s office was also reviewing the case.

Mr. Arzu was shot by Officer Raphael Lora, 37, who had confronted Mr. Arzu after he crashed his minivan into another car near Officer Lora’s home near midnight.

“The consul general can be assured there will be a complete investigation,” said the chief police spokesman, Paul J. Browne. “It is already under way.”

The shooting comes during a difficult period for the police. Weeks of public protest were touched off on Nov. 25, when five officers shot 50 bullets into a car in Queens, killing its driver, Sean Bell, and wounding two of his friends. Two officers were indicted on manslaughter charges and one was charged with reckless endangerment.

Relatives of Mr. Arzu, a building porter and musician, described him yesterday as a responsible, hard-working man who had never tangled with the police, and who was under the emotional stress of caring for his fiancée, a cancer patient.

The fiancée, Thomasa Sabio, 46, said in an interview that less than five hours before he was shot, Mr. Arzu had driven her home to the apartment they shared on Westchester Avenue. Ms. Sabio had undergone a mastectomy, and had been discharged from Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center.

After helping her change clothes and making her comfortable in the apartment, she said, Mr. Arzu said he needed some air and left at 7:30 p.m. She never heard from him again. Relatives said they did not know where he went after that.

“He was such a good man, he supported me through my illness,” she said, fighting back sobs in the public housing apartment she shared with Mr. Arzu and her 10-year-old son. “Now that he is not with me, I feel the pain eating from inside.”

By late yesterday, reaction to the shooting had settled into familiar contours. Dozens of people stopped by a memorial of candles and plastic flowers yesterday underneath the elevated tracks at Westchester Avenue and Hewitt Place, where Mr. Arzu’s minivan crashed after he was shot.

Kirsten Foy, a special assistant to the Rev. Al Sharpton, appeared there with a daughter of Mr. Arzu, Katherine Arzu, 20, and a woman who described herself as a family spokeswoman, at a news conference near the site of the shooting.

“I have no words,” Ms. Arzu said. “The cop shot my father and he needs to pay for all of this.”

Mr. Foy, while saying that he did “not have all the facts,” told reporters, “Mr. Arzu lost his life as a result of an impromptu, impetuous and in our estimation, unnecessary action by an off-duty police officer.”

But the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, which has offered to provide legal representation for Officer Lora, cautioned yesterday against jumping to conclusions. “Law enforcement has a legal obligation to conduct a full and thorough investigation of the facts before coming to any conclusion,” its president, Patrick J. Lynch, said.

Details of what happened when Officer Lora confronted Mr. Arzu remained unclear yesterday, and accounts varied among people who described themselves as witnesses. But the police said it started when Mr. Arzu drove his red Nissan Quest into a parked car on Hewitt Place around 11:40 p.m.

Officer Lora, dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans and armed with his handgun, ran from his home and confronted Mr. Arzu, who may have been trying to leave the scene of the accident. One witness said Officer Lora displayed his badge to others who gathered around the minivan, but not to Mr. Arzu; others said the badge was fully visible to all.

Mr. Browne, the police spokesman, said yesterday that witnesses described Officer Lora standing by the driver’s side of the minivan, with the driver’s door open.

The two men were then heard yelling at each other, and Officer Lora fired his first shot after the minivan lurched forward, witnesses said.

The police said Officer Lora fired his 9-millimeter Glock handgun five times, and the medical examiner ruled on Saturday that Mr. Arzu was killed by a single shot to his heart and a lung. The police said four bullets from Officer Lora’s gun were found lodged in the vehicle’s door frame, rear back panel and a panel over a taillight.

The minivan kept going for two blocks, eventually slamming into a church and bursting into flames.

No one answered a knock at Officer Lora’s door yesterday afternoon.

According to a person close to the investigation and familiar with Officer Lora’s account, the officer said he saw Mr. Arzu reaching for the glove compartment. But no weapon was found in the car.

As is standard procedure in such cases, Officer Lora’s gun was taken away and he was placed on “nonenforcement” duty. Mr. Browne said yesterday that no one in the department had interviewed Officer Lora because the police had to wait for the district attorney to decide whether to present the case to a grand jury.

Stephen Reed, a spokesman for the district attorney, declined to comment on the case.