MORE THAN COP'S MOM CAN BEAR
Devastated by testimony in son’s slay
I know it hurts but I have to keep pressure on your wounds. Stay with us! —Sgt. Christopher Noll to dying cop as noted at trial
The mother of a police officer shot dead when he stopped a man on a Queens street was overcome with grief as she heard a fellow cop recount for jurors the tragic final moments of her son’s life.
“I pulled Brian onto my lap. His head was face-up towards the ceiling,” Sgt. Christopher Noll testified Monday during the Queens trial of Demetrius Blackwell, charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Officer Brian Moore.
“He was very much alive, conscious,” Noll told jurors. “I talked to him. He was making incoherent sounds, just noises. It took seven to eight minutes to arrive at the hospital. I removed his vest, his shield. There was a lot of blood. It was hard to see where he was hit.”
Irene Moore shuddered and crumpled in her seat as the officer told of her 25-year-old son’s final moments, dropping her head toward her chest as she heard Noll describe his finger accidentally slipping into her son’s fatal head wound.
“My leg started to get warm and hot from the blood, and when I lifted him I saw he had been shot in the head,” the sergeant said. “He began to scratch my arms. My hand was on his face and must have went right into the area where he was shot.”
Officer Richard Tarver also took the stand to recall the frantic dash to the hospital in an attempt to save Moore in the moments after the May 2015 shooting.
“I was driving approximately 100 mph,” Tarver said. “I was driving on the sidewalk. I was running red lights. Driving the wrong way down one-way streets. At one point I drove on the grass.
“Officer Noll was in the back. He was trying to keep him responsive yelling for him to squeeze his hand, saying, ‘I know it hurts but I have to keep pressure on your wounds. Stay with us!’ ”
Blackwell shot Moore in the head after the officer responded to calls of a man throwing cinder blocks through a window, prosecutors say.
“Brian said, ‘Police, man,’ held up his shield and said, ‘You holding something? You got something on you?’ ” Moore’s partner, Erik Jansen, testified Monday.
“He said, ‘Yeah, I got something!’ and he turned right towards the car and shot Brian,” Jansen told jurors.
If convicted, Blackwell faces up to life behind bars.