Same punch, new trial.
A second Manhattan jury began hearing evidence today in the bizarre and horrific case of Oscar Fuller, charged with felony assault for admittedly punching a woman into a coma as they stood arguing over an East Village parking spot.
“She just literally landed like a sack of potatoes,” eyewitness Alex Rivas, 24, testified this morning of petite Lana Rosas, 25, who remains in therapy after suffering massive head injuries when the back of her head struck the pavement in February, 2011.
Fuller had shouted “F— you, you b—” moments before throwing the knock-out haymaker, according to testimony by Rivas’ girlfriend, Robin Bunevich, 25.
“It haunted me for weeks,” Bunevich said of the sickening thud that Rosas’ head made in striking the street — and of seeing the 4’11” woman splayed out, unconscious and with blood pouring from her nose and mouth.
Fuller, meanwhile, quickly peeled out in his minivan, both witnesses told jurors before lunch. He was arrested thanks to other eyewitnesses having written down his license plate.
The buff electrician was nearly convicted at his first trial, last November. But a single, pro-acquittal holdout juror caused a mistrial.
After that trial, pro-conviction jurors told reporters that they felt Rosas had erred first, by standing in the parking spot between avenues A and B so as to hold it open for a friend.
But Fuller must have intended to cause serious physical injury in delivering such a forceful blow, they said.
Rosas was in a coma for nine days, and was hospitalized for months.
She is still struggling with brain injuries, unable to work or drive, and her life revolves around her therapy sessions, her mother, Angie Harrison, told The Post this morning.
“It’s a slow process,” Harrison said. “A slow, steady improvement.”
“He struck her with such force, such ferocity, he literally knocked her unconscious while she was still on her feet,” assistant district attorney Artie McConnell told jurors this morning.
“It was a deliberate, intentional, unwarranted attack by a grown man against a woman who was barely five feet tall,” McConnell said.
The single count Fuller faces — second degree assault — requires prosecutors prove that Fuller intended to cause injuries of a disfiguring or protractively painful nature at the moment he threw the punch.
Defense lawyer Tom Kenniff told The Post today that he would pursue the same arguments during this retrial as he had on the first go-around.
There was simply no way that Fuller could have anticipated the massive injuries his single punch would lead to, the lawyer said.
“Just as we’ve said all along, the defense isn’t contesting that there was a punch or serious injuries,” Kenniff said.
“We’ve said all along that Oscar didn’t intend injuries of this magnitude.”