The grieving mother of slain cop Russel Timoshenko took the stand yesterday, glaring at the three ex-cons accused of killing her son, as Brooklyn prosecutors rested their grueling, five-week-long murder case.
Assistant DA Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi asked just a handful of questions of Tatyana Timoshenko, the last of more than 40 witnesses for the prosecution.
One query in particular brought sighs and choked gasps from the gallery.
“Do you have any children?” she asked.
“I had only just one son,” Tatyana Timoshenko replied.
Russel Timoshenko was shot twice in the face after pulling over a BMW SUV the morning of July 9, 2007. He lingered for five days before his anguished family authorized doctors to take him off life support.
“Were you with him when he passed away on July 14 of 2007?” the prosecutor continued, as the murdered man’s father, Leonid, bit his nails in the third row of the gallery.
“Yes, I was,” the mother said, fighting back tears and then slowly gazing over to the defense table where defendants Dexter Bostic, 36, Robert Ellis, 35, and Lee Woods, 30, sat stiffly.
Later, after hugs, kisses and handshakes from the scores of officers in attendance, the grieving mother – who has not missed a minute of testimony – said looking into the defendants’ eyes had been trying.
“It was very tough,” she said. “It was very tough for me to testify . . . They don’t care about people. They’re not human.”
If convicted, the three men face the rest of their lives in prison for gunning down the rookie officer in Crown Heights.
They must decide by Monday whether they will take the stand in their own defense.