A lawyer for students arrested in the chaotic aftermath of the police shooting of a Pace University football star is asking the US Justice Department to investigate the killing, she said today.
Bonita Zelman, the lawyer, said federal prosecutors need to probe the case because the local and state police agencies investigating Sunday’s shooting “are responsible for the failure to train these officers” who shot Darnoy “DJ” Henry and who busted several students afterward.
“They can’t run around with guns and Tasers threatening innocent college students,” Zelman told The Post.
Henry, 20, was shot by cops after allegedly hitting two of them with his car outside a Mount Pleasant bar, where a brawl was going on.
Witnesses claim Henry was gunned down after being ordered by police to move the car, and that teammates who tried to come to give him CPR as he lay dying in the road were threatened and handcuffed by police.
Zelman said, “You don’t shoot at a moving car when there are innocent passengers and innocent kids all around the area. I mean, what was the point? He had not committed any crime.”
Mount Pleasant police, State Police and the Westchester DA are probing the shooting.
A spokesman for the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York — which handles federal probes in the area — had no immediate comment about Zelman’s request.
An autopsy on Henry has been completed, but authorities today refused to divulge the results.
However, Zelman said witnesses told her that Henry had been shot either two or three times by police.