NEW YORK — A New York City correction officer charged with killing an 18-year-old man in the Bronx told police that he fired a single bullet after being hit in the back with what felt like glass shards or bullet fragments, according to accounts provided at his arraignment Friday.
The officer, Dion Middleton, who was off duty at the time, feared his life was in danger, his lawyer said in court. Middleton told police he turned and saw a passenger in a silver vehicle make a gesture with his hand before the window began to roll up and the car began to turn near Morris Avenue.
At that point, Middleton said, he fired his gun.
“I felt threatened, I took my weapon, I shot,” he told police.
It was only later, after Middleton, 45, left the scene without reporting the shooting, his lawyer said, that he learned that his bullet had hit Raymond Chaluisant, 18, killing him.
Officers responding to a 911 call found Chaluisant in the car but did not find a weapon, Mena Beshay, an assistant state attorney general, said in court Friday. What was found, he said, was a toy gun that shoots gel pellets made from water.
Middleton, who is employed by the city’s Correction Department as a firearms instructor, acknowledged in his statement to police that he had not seen anyone holding a weapon and that he had not heard any shots, Beshay said.
Middleton is charged with second-degree murder and first- and second-degree manslaughter, according to a criminal complaint filed by the New York state attorney general’s office. The agency is handling the case because it involves a law enforcement-related death.
Middleton, who previously worked for the state Corrections Department at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, was remanded Friday. He faces a life sentence in prison if convicted of the top count. He has been suspended without pay, the city’s Correction Department said Thursday. He earned $221,684 last year including overtime pay, the department said.
At the heart of the arguments at the arraignment was whether the toy gun found by investigators qualified as a weapon.
Soon after announcing Middleton’s arrest, the New York Police Department’s public information unit posted a message on Twitter that said that “bead blasters” — toy guns that shoot water gel pellets, similar to the one discovered near the shooting — are illegal in the city. A Police Department spokesperson said the message had not been specifically prompted by the killing of Chaluisant but by other recent episodes in the city involving water-bead weapons.
On Friday, the department put out a similar message on Twitter about bead blasters. The message was accompanied by pictures of several devices that the department said it had confiscated Thursday. None of the pictures showed the device recovered as part of the investigation into Chaluisant’s killing, officials said.
On Friday, police also shared with The New York Times two videos of bead blasters that were recently posted on social media. One shows a person shooting the toy gun at law enforcement officers outside the Bronx Hall of Justice. The other shows a person firing a toy gun at a police officer.
Joey Jackson, a lawyer who works for Middleton’s union, the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, and who is representing him, said his client had acted in what he believed was self-defense.
“At the time that my client discharged a single round, he was doing so under the belief that he was in immediate fear of death, of his life,” Jackson said. “In fact, what the prosecutor did not indicate was that yes, he did get hit by a — let’s call it for what it is. This is a weapon.”
Also at the arraignment were three correction officers and Benny Boscio Jr., president of the union.
“Our officer fired a single shot in a situation where he felt his life was in immediate danger, particularly after feeling something hit his back,” Boscio said in a statement after the arraignment.
“Toy guns no longer resemble toys, as the images of this water pistol demonstrate, and they remain an ongoing threat to public safety,” he added. “We will provide Officer Middleton with the best possible representation to ensure that his legal rights are protected.”
Middleton hung his head throughout the nearly half-hour arraignment, which drew more than a dozen of members of his family, including his mother. Some nodded in approval as Jackson spoke.
Outside Chaluisant’s building on Valentine Avenue, his friends, relatives and neighbors gathered among candles, flowers, balloons and posters that read, “Justice for Raymond.”
His brother Chris, 26, who lives in another state, had traveled eight hours to New York after hearing of Chaluisant’s death. He said his brother was simply going out to grab a bite to eat when he was shot, and he wondered why Middleton would leave the area after firing his gun.
“I would’ve forgiven the shooter if he would’ve stayed there and showed some remorse,” said Chris Chaluisant, who was wearing a T-shirt featuring a photo of his brother along with Raymond’s nickname, Bulldog.
“Deep down I’m really, really broken,” Chris Chaluisant said. “There’s really no way to put it.”
“It could happen to anybody, it just happened to happen to my brother,” he added. “It didn’t have to.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times .