Man blinded in shooting testifies

The last thing a former Port Jefferson Station man ever saw was the shotgun that blinded him, he testified Tuesday in state Supreme Court in Riverhead.

Since his face got hit with buckshot in December 2009 -- with six pellets ripping through his eyes -- Raymond Kaine said, "I can't really do anything. I don't see nothing but darkness."

Michael Perkowski, 23, is charged with first-degree assault in the shooting. The events leading up to the shooting at the edge of Perkowski's Port Jefferson Station home remain in contention.

Kaine, now 21, and a friend testified that Perkowski called Kaine a racial slur and swung a knife at Kaine with little provocation.

But Perkowski's attorney, Edward Palermo of Smithtown, said Kaine and his friends not only were the initial troublemakers, but reignited the confrontation after it was over by returning to Perkowski's house, seeking a fight.

"They're trying to inject race into it," Palermo said. "It's sad he's blind, but he brought it on himself."

According to testimony before Justice William Condon by Kaine and a friend of his, Joe Gilligan, they were walking to a bus stop with a close friend, Patrick Franklin Jr. Kaine at the time lived with Franklin's parents, who later died of carbon monoxide poisoning on a boat in Huntington.

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Gilligan and Kaine said Perkowski first yelled at them and used a racial slur as Kaine removed a paper sign attached to a stop sign in Perkowski's neighborhood. Gilligan said Perkowski suggested they were responsible for robberies in the area.

When Perkowski pulled a knife and swung it at Kaine, he gave the paper sign to Perkowski and left, Kaine said during questioning by prosecutor Jeffrey Langlan.

When they returned to the Franklins' house, both men said Patrick Franklin Sr. was incensed and piled them and another man into his sport utility vehicle and headed back to Perkowski's house. After Franklin Sr. screamed at him, Perkowski went inside and came back out with a shotgun, Kaine and Gilligan said.

He fired once into the ground and again at the car as the elder Franklin went after him with an ax handle, Kaine said. Buckshot from the third blast caught Kaine in the face. "It's the last thing I seen before I lost my vision," he said.