A second NYPD cop who fired his gun at Sean Bell and his friends testified today that he saw another officer raise his gun and thought the Queens man was trying to run them over.
Michael Carey, testifying at a departmental hearing in downtown Manhattan, said he saw his colleague Det. Gescard Isnora with his gun raised and his badge out, pointing his weapon at Bell’s car.
Carey said he thought Bell was trying to run the cops over.
“I didn’t think anything was an accident,” he said. “My conclusion after the first collision was that I believed they had intent to injure us.”
Carey recalled hearing someone shout “gun” — and saw Isnora firing his weapon.
Isnora would go on to shoot 11 of th 50 police bullets that killed Bell and injured his two friends just minutes after they left a Queens strip club.
“I stepped to my right outside the door,” he said, firing three bullets in rapid succession.
“When I saw [Isnora] fire and heard him yelling, ‘gun’ — those were the final facts of me deciding to fire.”
Carey, who was standing about 20 feet from Isnora at the time, said he thought the shots were coming from inside Bell’s vehicle. Instead, no weapon was ever found inside the bullet-riddled car.
“I thought there were gunshots coming from in and out of the vehicle,” he recalled. “I fired my weapon three times. It was fully loaded. It could have discharged 16 rounds.”
The testimony comes a day after Isnora broke his silence for the first time about the deadly 2006 shooting, saying he fired 11 bullets because he feared for his life.
“All I saw was his arm coming up,” Isnora said, referring to Bell’s friend Joseph Guzman. “I wasn’t going to wait for him to have the gun. By then, it’s too late.”
Isnora said he had heard Guzman say, “Go get my gun,” just moments earlier as they left Bell’s bachelor party.
“It’s not something you say playfully or in a joking manner,” Isnora said. “If you say it, you’re going to do it.”
That’s when Bell drove toward him, Isnora recalled, and that’s when he fired 11 shots.
“After the fact I realized that I fired all my rounds,” said Isnora.
Isnora said he told the men he was a cop before pulling out his gun and had his badge affixed to his collar.
Isnora and Carey face departmental charges of violating the police department’s shooting guidelines and could lose their jobs and pensions if found guilty. Isnora is also charged with unnecessarily revealing that he was an undercover cop that day.
Isnora was the first officer to confront Bell and his friends, Guzman and Trent Benefield, during an undercover operation targeting prostitution and other illegal activities at Club Kalua in Jamaica, Queens.
The disciplinary hearing follows a 2008 bench trial in Queens Supreme Court where Isnora and two other officers were acquitted of criminal charges.
The city has already paid over $7 million to settle lawsuits filed by Bell’s family and his two injured friends.