Oct 24, 2007 11:45 pm US/Eastern
Passenger In Road Rage Shooting Describes Tragedy
Victim's Friend Says Officer Should Have Identified Himself
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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Jayson Tirado died after being shot during a traffic dispute with an undercover NYPD officer.
CBS
A passenger sitting in the backseat of the car driven by the 26-year-old Manhattan resident fatally shot during a traffic dispute with an undercover NYPD officer tells CBS 2 that his friend might still be alive if the gunman had identified that he was a police officer.
Jason Batista says the dispute began after his friend, Jayson Tirado, and the officer, later identified as undercover narcotics officer Sean Sawyer, continually cut each other off on the FDR Drive early Sunday morning.
"After we passed him on the highway, after he let us merge, I thought it was over," Batista tells CBS 2. "He pulled alongside of us and asked us if we knew how to drive."
That's when the situation became violent, and Sawyer told police he fired his gun through the window where Batista was sitting. The bullet just missed Batista, but struck Tirado in the torso. He kept on driving down 1st Avenue, but died a short time later.
"He died in my hands," Batista says. "He died in my hands. How would you feel if somebody died in your hands?"
Sawyer left the scene, but turned himself in to police some 20 hours later for questioning. He claims the gun was fired in self-defense because Tirado pointed his finger at him as if it were a gun, he says.
Batista says the officer wasn't defending himself from anything.
"A finger is not a gun. He threatened our lives, first of all," he says. "If he had identified himself as a police officer, none of this would've ever happened."
Charles King, Executive Director of Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network echoes that feeling.
"How can you make a claim of self-defense when there's no weapon?" he says.
Tirado lived on the Lower East Side with his fiancee, Lisa Claudio, and their young daughter, Jayleen. Claudio says the situation might have been different had the officer identified himself.
"It would have changed everything. All you had to do was show your badge," Claudio tells CBS 2. "I don't even know what to tell my daughter! It's not fair, she's only four! She looks at the TV and sees her father there. What am I supposed to do? There's no answers!"
Sawyer was not charged with a crime because police say that is policy when an officer claims self-defense until the investigation is complete. Sawyer was suspended without pay afterward.
Legal sources tell CBS 2's Pablo Guzman that the grand jury that will decide whether to indict Sawyer may not start until mid-November or later, depending on how long it takes to gather the evidence. That could feel like an eternity for Tirado's friends and family.
"I'm not eating, I'm not sleeping," Batista says. "All I hear is the gunshots, and me screaming for Jayson to 'go, drive!' That's all I hear."
Stay with wcbstv.com and CBS 2 for the latest in this developing story.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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