Michael Perez remembers hearing a “big boom” when a police sergeant threw a cooler at his friend Eric Duprey’s head, killing him.
On Aug. 23 2023, Perez said, it was sunny outside. People were enjoying the weather along Aqueduct Avenue in the Bronx’s Fordham Manor section. The incident unfolded so quickly that Perez didn’t know right away what caused the loud noise, he said.
“But at that moment when it happened, everybody scattered,” Perez recalled in an interview this week. “Everybody got scared.”
Investigators with the New York attorney general’s office later determined that then-Sgt. Erik Duran was working with a team of detectives that day to make undercover drug arrests. Police had said they spotted Duprey, 30, selling drugs, but they accidentally tried to arrest the wrong person, according to the AG’s office. Duprey then hopped on a motor bike and started to ride away along the sidewalk. Security footage released by the office shows Duran heaving a picnic cooler filled with drinks and ice at Duprey’s head, causing the cyclist to lose control of his bike and skid along the street until he landed beneath a parked car.
Duprey cracked his head open and died almost instantly, according to the AG’s office.
Eric Duprey was killed during a police chase in 2023.
Courtesy Erika Duprey Soto
“He left his kids, left his mother. He just got taken from this world too early,” Perez said. “I don’t understand what was the reason behind all that.”
On Thursday, a Bronx judge sentenced Duran to three to nine years in prison, after finding him guilty of manslaughter at trial earlier this year. Before announcing his sentence, Justice Guy Mitchell said Duran, who he referred to as a “skilled veteran of the NYPD,” acted recklessly and had no justification for throwing the cooler.
“He should be held accountable for his lack of judgment,” Mitchell said.
Perez remembers police descending on the block as he and other bystanders moved out of the way.
“They say it was over a drug sale,” he said. “But it didn’t have to get to that level, to that magnitude.”
Duran, 38, was the first NYPD officer to be convicted of killing someone while on duty since 2016, when then-Officer Peter Liang was convicted of manslaughter and official misconduct for fatally shooting an unarmed man in the staircase of a Brooklyn public housing building. Unlike Duran, Liang was sentenced to probation, home confinement and community service, rather than prison time. Duran was dismissed from the police department after his conviction, and has said he threw the cooler to protect himself and others.
After Duran’s sentencing, the stretch of Aqueduct Avenue where the incident unfolded was buzzing with people taking strolls, walking their dogs and riding scooters. A black Puerto Rican flag tied to a metal gate memorialized the spot where Duprey, who grew up on the island, died.
As Adaiah Felix walked past, she said encounters between police and residents of the neighborhood tend “to get more escalated” instead of calmly resolved.
A memorial to Eric Duprey’s along Aqueduct Avenue.
Samantha Max / Gothamist
“So, it’s not very surprising when you hear things about police brutality and cases like that, where things like that happen,” she said of Duprey’s killing.
Felix said she assumed officers learn at the police academy not to respond to situations the way Duran did.
“We’re all human. That’s probably what he felt was the best thing he could do in that moment to stop the person,” she said. “But there was definitely ways to go about it. And obviously that was not the way to go about it.”
Richard Dejesus said he thought Duran should have received an even longer prison term.
“Give that man more time,” he said.
Dejesus listed various stories he’s heard about police using violence against people and said they should be held accountable for “doing bad things to people.”
Manuel Demetrio said Duran’s prison sentence provides some justice for Duprey’s death.
“Bravo for justice,” he said in Spanish. “I hope the family of the person who died is content with what’s happening now.”
Demetrio said police are a regular presence in the area and don’t typically get involved with people, unless those people are selling drugs or committing other crimes. He feels safer having police around, he said.
But Perez, Duprey’s friend, said he feels like police have been more aggressive along the block since that day in August 2023. He said it feels like a reaction to one of their fellow officers for getting in trouble.
NYPD sergeant Erik Duran leaves a Bronx courtroom following opening arguments in his criminal trial Wednesday.
Samantha Max / Gothamist
“That happened with one of their cops,” he said. “So, they’re really pissed off.”
Perez said he’s seen officers slamming people onto cars, and “harassing people.” He worries the relationship between police and the community will only become tenser now that their former colleague is facing a prison sentence, he said.
“You got to be very careful even hanging out here right now,” he said.
Still, Perez said he’s hopeful that Duran’s conviction and sentencing will send a message that police are not above the law.
“I’m not looking at it that he should get an extravagant amount of time, because, at the end of the day, he was just doing his job. But he did his job a little too aggressive,” Perez said. “Hopefully, with this, it should show them that they’re not going to get away with whatever they’re doing out in the streets, the way that they’re doing it.”
An NYPD spokesperson did not respond to questions about how the department plans to maintain relations between police and the community along Aqueduct Avenue.
Duran is appealing his guilty verdict.