And he offers a different account than the cops!
I know whom I'll believe in a court room!
"Road-Rage Passenger Offers an Account" by AL BAKER
A passenger in a car driven by the man killed in a road-rage shooting in Upper Manhattan on Sunday has denied police reports that he was too drunk to remember what happened, and said he did not believe his friend made a threatening gesture at a police officer just before he was shot.
[See, Amurka?
COPS LIE!]
The passenger, Anthony Mencia, 23, spoke yesterday near a makeshift memorial to the friend, Jayson Tirado, in the East Village, where Mr. Tirado’s friends have been dissecting the events that led to the confrontation between him and Sean Sawyer, an off-duty undercover officer.
Although Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly did not mention Mr. Mencia by name on Monday, he said that Mr. Tirado’s front-seat passenger — Mr. Mencia — reported having been so intoxicated that he “did not remember any of the events that happened.”
Police officials, citing the account of a third man, Jason Batista, 21, in Mr. Tirado’s car that morning, say they believe that Mr. Tirado gestured toward the officer as if he had a gun, though he was unarmed. Mr. Batista, who was in the back seat of Mr. Tirado’s purple Honda Civic, was too distraught yesterday to discuss the details of the shooting, according to a family friend who spoke on his behalf. His mother said he stands by the account he gave investigators.
But Mr. Mencia said he did not see his friend pretending to hold a gun or mentioning one:
Mr. Mencia said that because the Honda’s back windows were tinted, the officer might not have seen Mr. Tirado’s hand clearly:
“Jay was not liable to pull his fingers into a handgun gesture. If anything, he was liable to flip someone off. That’s why he assumed it was a gun.”
[So flipping the bird gets you KILLED now, huh?
(Double-barreled, middle-finger salute, asholes!)]
Mr. Mencia added that while he had been sleeping as the cars made their way down the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive before the confrontation, he awoke when they were forced to exit at 116th Street and the situation between Mr. Tirado and the officer exploded.
Mr. Mencia: “Coming off the exit, I was awake. How could I sleep? The whole argument was going on across my body. The cops said I was too drunk to remember anything. That’s not true. I was just too drunk at the moment to talk to them.”
After the gunshots rang out, the driver who shot Mr. Tirado sped away. It was not until 19 hours later that Officer Sawyer, 34, who joined the department in 2004, approached two uniformed officers outside his home in Upper Manhattan to say he might have shot and killed Mr. Tirado.
By then, investigators had already interviewed Mr. Batista, the police said.
In the first interviews with investigators in the hours after the shooting — before Officer Sawyer turned himself in — Mr. Batista said that Mr. Tirado had mentioned having a “new Ruger” under his seat, referring to a semiautomatic handgun, and then raised his hand and pointed his finger in a firing motion.
In a later interview videotaped by officers of the Internal Affairs Bureau, Mr. Batista repeated his account of Mr. Tirado’s actions, the police said.
[So did you torture him or threaten him? Or are you just lying again, fascista?]
At a news conference yesterday at First Avenue and 120th Street — where Mr. Tirado’s Honda came to a stop after the shooting — Charlie King, the acting national director of the National Action Network, the civil rights organization founded by the Rev. Al Sharpton, questioned whether Officer Sawyer was receiving preferential treatment because he is a police officer.
[Well this should mucky things up with Big Al the Divider getting involved!]
Mr. King said he had no knowledge, “one way or another,” about Mr. Batista’s account of Mr. Tirado’s actions. But he asked why Officer Sawyer would leave the scene “if he believed a crime was being committed and if he believed he was firing in self-defense.”
Mr. King: “Wouldn’t he call for backup and wouldn’t he say, ‘I am being attacked by people who are road-raging against me? It does not make sense that he would fire in self-defense and leave a scene of a crime, as he defines it, and not even report it for 19 hours until he had to turn himself in because he realized things were closing in on him.”
[That's right!]
Officer Sawyer, outside his home in Upper Manhattan yesterday:
“I’m just praying for both families. It’s an unfortunate situation. There’s only one person who can fix this, so we’ll just pray.”
[And praying for your hide, too, murderer?!?!]
