Lamont Pride, the 27-year-old career criminal accused of killing police officer Peter Figoski, told officers in the days after the slaying that he was sorry. Not sorry enough to plead guilty or try and change his story a few times—but sorry! "I’m sorry for what I did," he said according to newly released court papers. "I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t want to kill a cop. It went wrong and I’m sorry. I can’t take it back."
Lamont's lament came as cops questioned him and tried to piece together the night of December 12 and the botched robbery of a pot dealer that led to Figoski's death. Making that tricky is the fact that all five of the suspects in the case have told different stories at different times which only half add up. Surveillance video, discarded weapons and fingerprints, however, seem to be on the law's side. As far as confessions go, though: at one point Pride told cops he was only at dealer Jose Hernandez's house to buy drugs, then he was there to rob him but he didn't have a gun, then he accidentally shot Figoski with the cop's gun and finally he says he shot him with a gun as a reflex. "I was scared. I clutched both hands," he said in the report. "This fires the gun."
Along with Pride, his co-defendants and some of their families in court yesterday were a slew of angry police officers who are not ready to let this this story be before the trial starts in April. "Even when your son or daughter is a killer, as a parent you want to support," Pat Lynch, Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president, told NY1 outside of court yesterday. "But they need to know, their son took a father off the face of this earth and justice must be served. That’s why New York City police officers will be here to make sure that justice is served."
