By Rocco Parascandola and Matthew Chayes
Newsday
NEW YORK — An off-duty police officer who shot an unarmed immigrant to death in the Bronx has been indicted on first-degree manslaughter charges, police sources said last night.
Officer Raphael Lora is expected to surrender this morning to face a grand jury’s felony accusations in the May death of Fermin Arzu, a Honduran immigrant.
Lora has been on desk duty since then.
The shooting occurred shortly after Arzu, 41, crashed a minivan into a parked car on Hewitt Place in the Longwood section of the Bronx. After Lora, who lives on the block, went outside to see what happened, the two men exchanged words.
Lora said Arzu put the car into gear during the confrontation.
Leaked autopsy results - which outraged his family - indicated Arzu was intoxicated.
Arzu was unarmed, and his family and their representative, the Rev. Al Sharpton, demanded that Lora immediately be arrested for the shooting.
Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson met recently with attorneys for Arzu’s family to tell them that an indictment would soon be unsealed, said one of the attorneys, Sanford Rubenstein.
“This is the beginning of the journey for justice for the family,” Rubenstein said. “The fact that a police officer is now going to stand trial was significant to them.”
Lora’s attorney, Stu London, said he was “surprised” when he learned of the expected indictment.
“My client testified over two days,” London said. “I thought he was candid, emotional and very compelling.”
Discounting previous reports that Lora opened fire because Arzu had reached for the glove compartment, London said Lora began shooting because Arzu, intoxicated and unable to communicate, had put the car in drive “to speed off.”
“The officer was trying to prevent himself from being run over by the vehicle,” London said.
Sharpton, who presided over Arzu’s funeral, where mourner after mourner demanded charges against Lora, praised the grand jury’s action.
Sharpton said it helps vindicate the Bronx district attorney’s office, which he says “fumbled” the 1999 shooting case of Amadou Diallo, another unarmed immigrant who died in a hail of police bullets in the Bronx. The officers who shot Diallo were never convicted.
Today’s expected indictment comes three weeks after a police shooting in Brooklyn of an emotionally disturbed teenager who was unarmed but waving a hairbrush. The trial of the detectives who shot Sean Bell, an unarmed bridegroom, after his bachelor party in Queens, is also to begin soon.
The police department said it would have no comment until after the indictment is unsealed. A spokesman for the Bronx DA did not immediately return a message.
Staff writer Anthony M. DeStefano contributed to this story.
Copyright 2007 Newsday