CRUSHING SCENE: The crumpled bike of Marilyn Dershowitz (right) lies on the street after she fell beneath a truck while riding with hubby Nathan.
Ian Clement
CRUSHING SCENE: The crumpled bike of Marilyn Dershowitz (right) lies on the street after she fell beneath a truck while riding with hubby Nathan. (
)
He squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back.
Straining against tears, the lawyer brother of noted attorney Alan Dershowitz told jurors yesterday of rushing to his wife’s side as she lay dying astride her crushed bicycle — the victim, prosecutors say, of a callous hit and run by the driver of a seven-ton mail truck.
“I held her hand and said a few things to her,” Nathan Dershowitz, 70, testified about his dying wife, Marilyn, 68, also a lawyer.
The inseparable couple had been bicycling past a busy US Postal Service depot on West 29th Street last summer when Marilyn fell beneath the rear right wheel of driver Ian Clement, whose trial for leaving the scene of a fatal accident began yesterday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Surveillance video shows Clement quickly pulling to the side, then starting to drive away, then pulling over again before ultimately driving off.
“She squeezed my hand back, so I felt that there was some communication,” the widower recounted to jurors.
Marilyn — a physically fit private-practice mediator and mother of two to whom Dershowitz was married for almost five decades — was bleeding from her eyes, ears and mouth, and had tire marks over her shoulder and back, according to witness testimony. Her helmet, still on, was cracked.
Later, at the hospital, after doctors said she would not survive, “I went in and I spent about five, 10 minutes,” Nathan Dershowitz remembered solemnly, still struggling to keep his composure. “I was just talking to Marilyn, and she wasn’t talking back.
“Then I just kissed her, and went out.”
Dershowitz’s testimony followed opening statements in which lead prosecutor Erin LaFarge decried a post-accident scene of obvious chaos — all visible and audible to Clement as he remained parked nearby for a total of some three minutes.
“He knew, or should have known, that someone was hurt,” she told jurors. “He hears the horrified screaming of people behind him,” she said. “He hears honking, sees people getting out of their cars. He does nothing.”
But Clement left the chaotic scene believing he was not involved, insisted defense lawyer John Arlia in his own opening statement. Given his clean driving record and the lack of alcohol in his system, why else would Clement just drive away?
“When you wait three minutes and nobody approaches your truck, it is natural to assume you’re not involved,” Arlia said.
Alan Dershowitz — the Harvard Law School professor and former O.J. Simpson Dream Teamer who famously got the conviction of Claus von Bulow overturned — was not in the courtroom, but the defense summoned him up anyway, apparently to suggest the DA pursued the case in part due to pressure from the influential attorney.
“Did your brother talk to the district attorney’s office?” the defense lawyer asked the widower.
“I believe he did,” came the answer. “I have no further questions,” Arlia snapped.
Testimony continues today.