Cops shooting caught on tape

BY ROCCO PARASCANDOLA | rocco.parascandola@newsday.com

7:13 AM EDT, July 10, 2007

Startling video footage from a camera at a small business shows the shooting Monday of two city police officers after they pulled over a stolen BMW sport utility vehicle in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens.

Officers Russel Timoshenko and Herman Yan were hit just before 2:30 a.m., police said. Through the day and into the evening Monday, a massive police manhunt continued to find three male suspects, as friends said Timoshenko lay in a coma at Kings County Hospital Center with two .45-caliber bullets lodged in the back of his head. Yan, shot once in the chest and once in the arm, was in stable condition at the same hospital.

The video, reviewed by a Newsday reporter, shows the two officers approaching the BMW from its rear, Yan toward the driver's side and Timoshenko toward the passenger side. Next, Timoshenko, 23, falls to the curb along Rogers Avenue, his blood welling around the small portion of his body that is visible because of the camera's angle.

His partner, Yan, 26, disappears from view but immediately reappears, gun drawn and pointing in the direction of the vehicle's getaway. Next, Yan yells into his radio, crouches and grabs one of his arms before kneeling near his stricken comrade.

Monday night, a trove of evidence was being analyzed: fingerprints lifted from the BMW, which the suspects ditched nearby; more video footage from a Kingston Avenue apartment building and a home around the corner on Lefferts Avenue; and three guns and clothing recovered from the driveway of the residence on Lefferts.

Police went door-to-door looking for a man named "Eric," as well as those of other names, according to people interviewed by police. Cops also showed residents a picture of a woman believed to be the girlfriend of one of the suspects.

Crime scene investigators were dispatched to Five Towns Mitsubishi, the Inwood dealership from which the $30,000 BMW was stolen after the business closed Sunday at 5 p.m.

Timoshenko, a Russian immigrant, came to the United States in 1993, joined the New York Police Department 18 months ago and has been on street patrol for only a year. Yan is a three-year veteran.

Together, they worked at the 71st Precinct, their relative few years as cops increasingly common on a force in which more than 40 percent of the officers signed on beginning in 2002.

What Police Commissioner Ray Kelly called a "brazen attack" unfolded in moments.

Timoshenko and Yan ran the plates on a 2003 BMW and learned the plates were registered to a Mitsubishi owned by a 70-year-old Queens woman. The officers pulled the driver over at Rogers and Lefferts avenues and approached the BMW on foot. Kelly and other police officials said their tactics were sound and by the book.

"It was then," Kelly said, "that someone inside the vehicle fired in the officer's direction, striking first Officer Timoshenko. Officer Yan returned fire and he was able to radio for help, but he too was hit with gunfire."

Nikeisha Farrell, who lives nearby, said officers loaded Timoshenko into a police car before an ambulance even got there. "He was laid out on his back, half on the sidewalk, half in the street, by the fire hydrant," said Farrell, 29.

The suspects fled north on Rogers and then east on Empire Boulevard, speeding past the 71st Precinct before turning right onto Kingston Avenue. A block later, just before Lefferts, the suspects got out and fled, leaving the BMW's lights and left-turn signal on.

Yan, who lives in Brooklyn, has 36 arrests to his credit. He was shot in the arm and in the chest, but his bulletproof vest spared him serious injury.

"We have every reason to believe his life was saved by the bulletproof vest," Kelly said at a hospital news conference.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was able to meet with Yan.

"All things considered, he was in good spirits. He should make a full recovery," Bloomberg said. "Tragically, the same can't be said about Officer Timoshenko. I gave thanks [to his parents] from a concerned city, but as a parent I can't come close to understanding their feelings."

Meanwhile, COP SHOT offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspects. Callers to 800-COP-SHOT do not have to identify themselves.

Matthew Chayes, Matthew Nestel and staff writer Karla Schuster contributed to this story.