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| Convicted NYC Police Officer Requests Help for Alcoholism |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 10/14/2002 |
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The former New York City police officer who was convicted of killing four Brooklyn family members while driving drunk last year said he needs treatment for his alcohol abuse. ''It doesn't make sense for me to be in prison for five, six, seven years and not get into a program to help with the problem that got me here,'' Joseph Gray said in an interview with Newsday on Wednesday. ''If I was going out robbing people because I had a drug habit, they would send me to a place where there was a drug program, plain and simple.'' Gray was convicted in May of second-degree manslaughter in connection with the Aug. 2001 deaths of Maria Herrera, a pregnant 24-year-old, her 16-year-old sister and 4-year-old son. The baby that Herrera was carrying survived for only 12 hours after being delivered by Caesarean section. A spokesman for the state Department of Correctional Services told Newsday that Gray cannot participate in an alcohol-treatment program because he is in protective custody. Gray is serving a five-to-15 year prison term. He is eligible for release in 2007, but the victims' families will have the opportunity to contest his parole. He was shown to have a blood-alcohol level of .16, well above the .10 legal limit, in tests done four hours after the accident. Prosecutors said that Gray was on a 12-hour drinking binge before he drove his minivan into the family members as they crossed a Brooklyn. Speaking from the upstate Oneida Correctional Facility, Gray said he believes that he did not run a red light on the night of the accident, as prosecutors have argued. ''It really doesn't mean anything whether they came from the left or whether they came from the right. I never should have been behind the wheel of a car that day,'' Gray said. |
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