Officials, kin mourn Akai Gurley, shot by the NYPD
Elected officials told mourners the world was watching Friday as they remembered an unarmed man shot dead by a rookie police officer in a darkened public housing stairwell.
At a wake that came hours after the Brooklyn district attorney announced plans to take the case to a grand jury, Akai Gurley was mourned by relatives as a loyal father and son.
But Gurley also has become part of a narrative of anguish over police use of deadly force, with his wake coming amid protests over the lack of criminal charges against white police officers in the recent deaths of unarmed black men in New York City and Ferguson, Missouri.