NEW YORK — Stunned relatives of an unarmed man killed by a rookie police officer in a dark public housing stairwell looked on Saturday as the Rev. Al Sharpton and public officials demanded a full investigation into what law enforcement officials have termed an apparent accident.
''We're not demonizing the police,'' Sharpton said, but ''this young man should not be dead.''
Police said the fatal shooting of Akai Gurley in Brooklyn's gritty East New York neighborhood appears accidental. However, Sharpton said, ''How do we know until there is a thorough investigation of all that happened?''
He spoke at a rally in Harlem, standing alongside Gurley's 2-year-old daughter, her mother, and several elected officials. Gurley's relatives remained silent during and after the rally.
Gurley's death comes at a sensitive time, with a grand jury weighing whether to bring criminal charges against another officer in the chokehold death of a man on Staten Island, and the nation bracing for a potential announcement soon on whether an indictment will be handed up in the fatal shooting of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Mo.
''Until we address the issue of police killing people of color, we're going to always have the problem; we're deaf on the issue,'' Alex Mallory, 64, a Bronx resident who once lived in public housing, said after the rally. ''I could have easily been this guy, walking down the stairs.''
New York City police often conduct ''vertical patrols'' inside public housing complexes by going from roofs down staircases that sometimes are havens for crime.
Police Commissioner William Bratton has said the patrols are needed, and the development where Gurley was shot had recently seen a shooting, robberies, and assaults.
Officer Peter Liang and his partner, also new to the force, were patrolling a pitch-dark stairwell with flashlights late Thursday night, police said. Gurley, 28, was leaving his girlfriend's apartment after she had braided his hair, according to the girlfriend, who is not his daughter's mother.
Police said the officers walked down the stairs onto an eighth-floor landing when Gurley and his girlfriend opened a stairwell door one floor down, having given up on waiting for an elevator.
Police said Liang, walking with his gun drawn, fired without a word and apparently by accident, hitting Gurley from about 10 feet.
Mallory, the former public housing resident, said an officer should never patrol a building with a gun drawn.