The Queens man accused of fatally shooting a Nassau County police officer and a Brooklyn man in October pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder Monday and was ordered held without bail.
Darrell Fuller, 33, is due back in Nassau County Court on Dec. 6. His lawyer, Victoria Brown Douglas of Cambria Heights, Queens, declined comment after the proceeding.
Police officers, including many from the slain officer's Emergency Services Unit, packed the courtroom and spilled into the hallway for the arraignment in front of Judge Jerald Carter.
Prosecutors said that on Oct. 23 Fuller gunned down Officer Arthur Lopez and Raymond Facey, 58, of Brooklyn, while stealing Facey's car.
"He killed two people: a police officer and an innocent bystander, and now we have to pay to keep him alive for the rest of his life," said James Carver, who heads Nassau's Police Benevolent Association, outside court.
The indictment against Fuller includes a third count of first-degree murder under the legal theory that Fuller killed more than one person in the course of one criminal act.
In addition to those charges, the indictment includes a count of second-degree murder in Facey's death, two counts of robbery related to the theft of Facey's car, and one count of criminal possession of a weapon, prosecutor Michael Walsh said in court.
Fuller, an ex-convict, had been in a vehicle accident and shot Lopez as the officer approached his car near the corner of 241st Street and Jamaica Avenue on the Nassau/Queens border, according to prosecutors and police.
Minutes after shooting the officer, Fuller shot Facey and stole his car near the Cross Island Parkway, prosecutors said.
Fuller then "staged his own shooting" in a failed attempt to make himself look like an "innocent victim," prosecutors said. Investigators believe he may have had an accomplice inflict those superficial wounds after the alleged crime spree. Gerald Williams, 27, of Kew Gardens, was arrested by NYPD and Nassau County police and subsequently charged with criminal possession of a weapon.
Lopez's killing was the fourth line-of-duty death suffered by Nassau police in the past 20 months. It came just a day after a funeral was held for Joseph Olivieri, a Nassau highway patrolman struck by a sport utility vehicle while at an accident scene on the Long Island Expressway. ___
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