A jury has found Lamont Pride, who fatally shot Officer Peter Figoski in December 2011, guilty of second-degree murder. Pride had claimed that it was an accident but prosecutors said he intended to kill the 47-year-old NYPD veteran.

Pride had been charged with both first- and second-degree murder, aggravated murder of a police officer, burglary and criminal possession of a weapon. He was also convicted of burglary but acquitted on the other charges.

Pride and three other men were in the middle of robbing a pot dealer in Brooklyn. Newsday reports:

Prosecutors said Pride was so intent on escape after the gunpoint robbery of a Brooklyn drug dealer that he intentionally shot Figoski in the face rather than risk arrest when the men faced each other on a narrow stairway. "It was a deliberate, intentional shot in order to make his escape," prosecutor Kenneth Taub said as he summed up the case against Pride in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn.

Defense attorney James Koenig had told a jury that his client's actions were "moronic" and "stupid," but he had not intended to shoot Figoski. Taub told jurors Figoski was responding to a report of a robbery in progress when he confronted Pride coming up the stairs from a basement apartment at 25 Pine St. about 2:20 a.m. on Dec. 12, 2011.

The stairway was narrow. Figoski weighed 250 pounds. Pride weighed 180 pounds at the time of his arrest, yet is so broad-shouldered that court officers have to use two sets of handcuffs when they bring him in and out of court. The stairway "wasn't wide enough . . . [for Pride] to get around him," Taub said.

Pride could have shot Figoski in the leg or in the chest, where he would be protected from a fatal wound by his bullet-resistant vest, Taub said, but he shot the officer in the face because, "he wanted to be sure of the result."

Pride had been wanted on an outstanding warrant in North Carolina at the time of the shooting; while the NYPD had arrested him twice and notified the N.C. authorities, but legal issues with the extradition kept him on the streets.

Figoski chose to work on the night shift so he could take his four daughters to school (he had custody of them after his divorce). He had been the second-most senior member of the 75th Precinct, spent his entire career in the troubled area (the 75th leads the city in robberies) earning 12 department commendations and making 209 arrests—nearly half on felony charges.