The ex-NYPD sergeant starting a jail term Thursday for fatally chucking a cooler at a fleeing drug suspect grew up in a violent Bronx neighborhood to become a “model” cop before his sudden downfall.
Former Sgt. Erik Duran “always protected the vulnerable” during his 15 years on the force, his lawyer said in court Thursday – but his career and life were thrown into disarray when he recklessly killed Eric Duprey in Aug. 2023.
“I took this job to save lives,” Duran, who received a jail term of three to nine years, told the court. “I felt terrible once I saw Eric Duprey crash. I regret that this day ever happened.”
Duran, 38, while addressing the court, said he grew up in a crime-plagued Bronx neighborhood, noting that when he was just 8 years old a gunman walked into a restaurant and opened fire on his family.
Several of his best childhood friends were “swallowed up into gangs, into drugs, and I couldn’t even recognize them anymore,” he recalled.
“I took that pain, and I harnessed it” into becoming a cop,” the Putnam County resident said, adding he was inspired to serve after he saw police race toward danger on 9/11.
“I ask the court to not look at me as a regular cop,” said the father of three who married his high school sweetheart in a Bronx courthouse down the block from his court hearing.
During his career, he’s seen his lieutenant shot and was once bitten so hard it broke skin, he said. He also struggled with armed perps several times, but never used lethal force.
Duran’s lawyer, Andrew Quinn, said his client “protected women and children abused in their homes” and took more than 50 guns off the street.
He called him a “model cop” who has led an “exemplary” life.
Duran lost his job when he was found guilty of manslaughter in February for throwing the red Igloo cooler at Duprey as he fled from a drug sting on a Bronx sidewalk, causing the suspect to fall off and hit his head.
“No man should be judged entirely for a decision he made in the blink of an eye,” Quinn said.
While Duran and Duprey, 30, were counterparts the day of the fatal crash, the two had similarities, the judge noted.
Both men were Hispanic and Bronx natives. They each have children.
“The distinction is that the deceased will no longer be seen again by his family,” Mitchell said from the bench.
Duprey, a father of two, had at least a pair of past arrests on drug and assault charges, law enforcement sources said.
Duprey’s mother, Gretchen Soto, said through an interpreter in court she misses her child “every day,” stressing he was “well-loved” by his relatives and sister.
“I miss him a lot,” she said with Duprey’s partner also in attendance. “To this day, his children miss him a lot.”
