Mayor Bloomberg tried his best to mask his frustration over a Brooklyn jury’s decision to clear a man of murder in the slaying of rookie cop Russel Timoshenko – but he just couldn’t do it.
“I don’t want to criticize, but . . . inside I feel very strongly about it. There’s something wrong here,” Bloomberg said yesterday when asked about his reaction to Tuesday night’s shocking acquittal of accused gunman Robert Ellis on murder charges.
“A police officer [was] dedicating his life to protecting all of us,” Bloomberg said. “I found it very hard to understand how they could come up with the decision that they made.”
Ellis, 35, was convicted on three gun-possession charges but acquitted of aggravated murder and attempted murder for the July 9, 2007, Crown Heights shooting.
Timoshenko was shot in the face after pulling over the stolen BMW in which Ellis was riding along with the second accused gunman, Dexter Bostick, and alleged driver Lee Woods.
The murdered cop’s partner, Herman Yan, survived because bullets hit his protective vest.
The fates of Bostick and Woods remain in the hands of two separate juries, which will continue to deliberate today.
Woods’ jury last night asked for a readback of his testimony, in which he claimed to be a police informant gathering information about gun buys for cops and said he was an unwilling participant in the shooting.
The panel also asked for a clarification on what it means to be an accessory to murder.
In a closing arguments yesterday, Bostick’s lawyer, Edward Wilford, took aim at the fingerprint and ballistics evidence in the case, calling it “junk science.” He claimed prosecutors failed to prove his client intended to kill.
Holding up one of the guns used in the murder, Assistant District Attorney Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi countered, “This gun – any gun – is a killing machine. That’s how you know [intent] – by choice of weapon.”
US Attorney Benton Campbell declined to comment on whether the feds would pursue a federal civil-rights investigation against Ellis.
“The juries are still out on some of the codefendants, so it’s a pending trial and obviously, that’s very sensitive,” he said.
Additional reporting by Lorena Mongelli