A former MDC Brooklyn guard charged with illegally shooting up a BMW during a high-speed chase with contraband smugglers told jurors Monday he thought he was dealing with a jailbreak, and he didn’t report the shooting or call 911 because he was in “shock.”
Former correction officer Leon Wilson, 51, took the stand in his own defense during a day of testimony at his Brooklyn Federal Court trial, describing his a “split-second decision” on Sept. 4, 2023, when a BMW backed into the parking lot shortly after 4:30 a.m., its occupants ready to deliver a package of pot, smokes and cell phones.
Wilson is accused of chasing the BMW in his Bureau of Prisons van for more than a mile, even though his authority ended once he left jail property, then opening fire on the vehicle, wounding its backseat passenger.
Wilson sparred with Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Silverberg during an at-times heated cross-examination, repeatedly sidestepping yes-or-no questions about his training and the elevated risks of shooting at a moving vehicle and driving at the same time.
“Your testimony today is the first time you’ve mentioned that you were responding to a possible escape?” the prosecutor asked at one point, getting the response from Wilson, “Absolutely not.”
The 23-year BOP veteran, who was working perimeter duty and allowed to carry a service weapon, said the building was on heightened alert that night because its intelligence division had caught word of a possible contraband plot.
And even though he wasn’t supposed to leave his post, he drove off for a few minutes to buy a MetroCard and get some coffee. He returned because he heard clicks from a colleague on his radio that signaled something was up, and he saw the sedan in the staff lot, he said.
“On the second level there was a rope. The rope seemed to be already down,” he said.
Inmates often use ropes to pull contraband packages through upper-floor windows, though Judge Pamela Chen ruled last week that testimony at the trial couldn’t cover broad trends of violence or smuggling at the Sunset Park jail.
“I was very concerned this could be an escape. There’s procedures if somebody hits the ground. We go into a procedure called shoot-to-stop,” he said.
He pulled up to the BMW and it drove away, and that’s when he made his decision to give chase, he said.
He told jurors he couldn’t call for help or report what he saw because his radio flew into the passenger seat well when he made a sharp turn, and he couldn’t unlock his cell phone because it wasn’t recognizing his face as he drove.
Wilson caught up with the BMW by Hamilton Ave. and Hamilton Place, after said, it slowed down for him, and he saw a gun pointed at him from the rear passenger window.
Wilson said he followed his BOP training to deal with “a threat to your life, a firearm, a crossbow.”
“I believe that my life was in danger and at that moment I feared for my life and defended myself to the best of my ability,” he said.
After the shooting, he said, “A lot of emotions came…. I was there but I wasn’t there,” so he kept driving, then turned around when he realized he was heading to the Brooklyn Bridge, he went back to his post, too frazzled to report what happened.
Silverberg grilled Wilson on whether he saw anyone that looked like an escaped prisoner, and on his minute-to-minute account of the chase and shooting, and how he managed to reach for his gun.
Wilson said when he saw the gun he dropped the phone in his left hand, grabbed his gun from his right side, transferred it to his left and reached out an open window to fire in a matter of seconds. A passenger in the BMW testified last week that no guns were present in the vehicle.
“You’re doing a lot of things, but one of the things you didn’t do is call the police?” Silverberg asked, and Wilson responded, “Sounds good, there’s a lot of should have-could-have.”
The prosecutor also pressed on Wilson’s assertion that he was in shock and kept on driving after the shooting, playing video showing him maintaining speed with the BMW, running a steady red light and passing other vehicles on the road.
“You’re not just driving. You’re just chasing…. You’re not done,” Silverberg quipped. “Not a chase? You’re driving the exact way as the BMW, at the exact same speed, but you’re not chasing?
Wilson insisted, “I don’t remember any of that.”
