Testimony picked up again yesterday in the trial of three police officers for fatally shooting an unarmed man in 2006. The prosecution called friends of victim Sean Bell and the commanding officer of the undercover operation to the stand.
Bell was to be married on November 25, 2006, and the night before, he and his friends were celebrating with a bachelor party at Club Kalua, a topless bar in Jamaica, Queens. Friend Hugh Jensen said he thought a bar patron Bell had a fight with was carrying a gun, "Of course I thought he had a gun. His actions were like he had a gun ... I don't know what he had in his pocket." The man, Fabio Cociou, will be testifying later on.
And friend Larenzo Kinred said, during the fight between Cociou and Bell, he overheard Bell's friend James Kollore say, "We'll take that from you." The Post notes the defense used that to suggest the undercover cops thought Kollore was referring to the gun, creating fears Bell's friends were armed. Kinred also testified that he saw the cops firing at Bell's car, after it had crashed into the police van. He said he yelled, "What are you doing?" and that a cop replied, "Get the ---- off the block."
The day ended with Lieutenant Gary Napoli on the stand. He said staking out the topless bar Club Kalua was not the original plan, saying a drug dealer "we wanted to meet with" wasn't at their other first choice location. So the team targeted Kalua for prostitution arrests. Napoli will continue his testimony today, and Newsday reports he's expected "to describe the frenzied moments when he pulled his Toyota Camry next to Bell's Nissan Altima just in time to see that car suddenly pull away and crash into a police prisoner van."
Earlier in the week, Bell's father William and a stripper who worked at the club testified.
