Commanding Officer At Sean Bell Shooting Testifies

The commanding officer of the detectives charged in the fatal shooting of Sean Bell testified on Friday that believing he was under fire, he drew his gun and pointed it toward the passenger windows of his car that night. He was ready not only for ambush, he said, but ready to add to the fusillade of 50 shots that claimed Mr. Bell’s life.

“If anyone came up on our car, I would have fired,” said the officer, Lt. Gary Napoli, in part of the second-by-second account he gave in the trial of three detectives charged in Mr. Bell’s killing after his bachelor party on Nov. 25, 2006.

The lieutenant also testified that an oft-quoted radio transmission from one of the detectives before the shooting that the situation was “getting hot” was, to his mind, a frantic call for help.