A grand jury declined to indict an off-duty police officer who fatally killed another driver in a road rage shooting last year.
Officer Sean Sawyer waited 19 hours before turning himself in for the October 2007 shooting of Jayson Tirado. An accident on the FDR forced cars to exit, and Tirado had apparently refused to let him merge in a lane off the FDR (closed due to an accident) and later cut him off on First Avenue. When Sawyer confronted Tirado around East 117th Street, Tirado supposedly gestured as if he had a gun and said, "You want to see my new Ruger?" which prompted Sawyer to fire. Tirado was not armed.
Since he wasn't indicted, Sawyer now only faces possible NYPD disciplinary charges; the Post reports he will probably be dismissed. Per a Daily News source, "You can't fire your gun and disappear for 19 hours. Even if he didn't hit anyone, he would be in trouble. In this case, he killed someone and ran."
Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau said his office would try to enact change, "I'm sure that most people would be shocked to learn that it is not a crime for a police officer to leave the scene of a shooting without reporting it as soon as practicable. I share their outrage. But that is the law. As a result of this case, we will be submitting legislation to change that.” (Currently, it's only against the law to leave the scene of a vehicular accident.) And Tirado's mother said, "They robbed me of my son and nobody is going to do anything. There was no gun. This was just a brutal murder."
