The Associated Press
 Joseph Guzman, left, speaks during a news conference as attorney Michael Hardy looks on Wednesday in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II) |
NEW YORK (AP) -- One of the two survivors of a 50-shot police fusillade that killed their friend just hours before his planned wedding recalled Wednesday lying on top of the dying man as they both said “I love you,’' and then hearing a final breath and silence.
Joseph Guzman, still in a wheelchair after taking 16 bullets, recalled the final moments of the bachelor party that turned tragic after police fatally shot Sean Bell, 23, in the early morning hours of Nov. 25. Guzman wound up wounded on top of Bell after trying to escape.
“He stopped moving, he stopped talking,’' he told a Harlem news conference after his release from the hospital. “I called, ‘S, S.’ I knew he was shot real bad.’'
The grand jury investigation is expected to continue for a month or more before the officers learn whether they will face criminal charges. All are on paid leave.
Bell died, and Guzman -- shot 16 times -- was hospitalized for the last two months.
Guzman, wearing a sweat shirt with Bell’s name across the front and a button of his late friend, said police opened fire without a word or a warning outside the Kalua Cabaret strip club. He and his friends were unarmed, Guzman stressed.
“We didn’t even have a pair of scissors in the car,’' Guzman said. “I don’t know what started this. We did nothing ... I don’t want them to get away with this.’'
Guzman’s release comes as a Queens grand jury hears testimony on the shooting, which has sparked community outrage and put police tactics and motives under a microscope.
Five police officers fired a total of 50 bullets outside the strip club where Bell was attending his bachelor party. Police have said the officers believed one of the men in Bell’s group was retrieving a gun, but no weapon was found. Bell was killed hours before he was to marry his high-school sweetheart.
Guzman and survivor Trent Benefield are black, as was Bell. Some of the officers are black, and some are white.
“I don’t think this was racial, but I do think a crime was committed,’' Guzman said. “I want (the officers) to pay for what they did, to be prosecuted like anybody else. ... Ninety percent of the people in this room know he was murdered. He was murdered in cold blood.’'
The grand jury investigation is expected to continue for a month or more before the officers learn whether they will face criminal charges. All have been put on paid leave.
Guzman, 31, said he suffered nerve damage in his right foot, and had a steel rod implanted to buttress his left leg. He was accompanied by his fiancee and his two sons at the news conference.