A former Haiti cop who was shot eight times on a Brooklyn street took the stand today against the Haitian man accused of trying to kill him.
Ex-detective Guiteau Nelson, 47, fingered Hugues “Dadou” Leon, 38, as the gunman who blasted him after he left an East Flatbush club in late 2009.
Leon held a violent grudge against Nelson ever since he was arrested and two of his cohorts were killed in a botched 1997 robbery in Haiti, The Post reported in 2010.
The blood feud continued two years later when Leon’s gang ambushed the then-Port-au-Prince detective and shot him in the arm and shoulder, Nelson has said.
“He tried to kill me,” Nelson said yesterday of the 1999 attack.
The bad blood followed the men to New York, where Leon attacked and threatened Nelson at the 2006 West Indian Day Parade and at a Long Island house party in 2009 — then shot him as he sat in his car later that year, Nelson testified in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
“This man shot him eight times with a sidearm and left him to die on the streets of Brooklyn,” said assistant district attorney Kevin Aulbach.
But defense attorney Douglas Appel peppered Nelson with questions about rain on the car window and how he ducked down after the first shot. After Nelson testified he did not wear eyeglasses, Appel held up Facebook photos of Nelson wearing black-rimmed glasses.
Appel also grilled Nelson on the differing accounts he gave investigators — and why he failed to tell investigators that “Dadou” shot him until after he was released from the hospital.
“I didn’t want to speak at the hospital because I didn’t know who might come finish me off,” Nelson said through a Creole translator in court yesterday.