A photograph of NYPD Officer Brian Moore outside the 105 Precinct in Queens Village in 2015. A Queens jury late Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017 began deliberating the fate of accused cop killer Demetrius Blackwell, the Queens man on trial for the killing of Moore in May 2015. Photo Credit: Uli Seit.
See Newsday slideshow "Brian Moore Remembered."
A Queens jury late Wednesday began deliberating the fate of accused cop killer Demetrius Blackwell, the Queens man on trial for the killing of NYPD Officer Brian Moore in 2015.
After about three and half hours of summations by prosecutors and the defense, Queens State Supreme Court Judge Gregory Lasak spent an hour instructing jurors on the law and had them begin deliberations shortly before 5 p.m. Blackwell, 37, is charged with first- and second-degree murder in the killing of Moore, 25, of Plainedge, who died two days after he was shot in the head on May 2, 2015.
Blackwell also is charged with first- and second-degree attempted murder for shooting at Moore’s partner, Officer Eric Jansen, who was unharmed. He is charged with criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree.
Prosecutors told the jury that Moore was shot after he and Jansen, suspicious of Blackwell’s actions on a Queens Village street, pulled their unmarked police car up to him.
“Police. You got something?,” Moore asked Blackwell as the police car stopped, according to evidence at the trial.
“Yeah. I got something,” Blackwell answered the moment before he pulled out a handgun and fired from five feet away into Moore’s head, prosecutors said in court during the trial.
During his summation, Queens Executive Assistant District Attorney Daniel Saunders told the jury: “Brian Moore was killed because he was a police officer. There is no other reason.”