Witness describes DHB exec's raging threats

The former controller of the body-armor producer Point Blank testified yesterday that an enraged David Brooks "flung . . . water all over me" from a bottle, screamed, cursed and threatened, after he resigned from a Brooks subsidiary, saying that the company's profits were being greatly inflated.

"Brooks shouted that I was a ' -- snake' " and "I would never work again in the state of Florida. . . . ' " the controller, Travis Brooks, said in federal court in Central Islip. Travis Brooks is not related to the defendant, David Brooks.

Before the incident, Travis Brooks said he told company executive Sandra Hatfield that, "I would be resigning because I was uncomfortable" with the company's accounting practices. David Brooks headed DHB Industries, formerly in Westbury, of which Point Blank was a subsidiary, and Hatfield was the chief operating officer.

David Brooks is charged with illegally making $185 million by selling company stock after the business' value was artificially inflated, and Hatfield with making $5 million.

Under questioning by federal prosecutor Christopher Caffarone, Travis Brooks testified that David Brooks had come into the room he was in, along with an unidentified man who was blocking the entrance, and shouted, " 'I'm going to kick your --.' "

Travis Brooks said he was able to get out uninjured. His testimony is expected to continue Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert.

In a related development, Seybert said that the psychiatrist at the federal detention center in Queens, who is treating Brooks, thinks it is medically inappropriate for him to be given the medication that the defendant and his personal psychiatrist say he should be prescribed. But the judge said she had no power to overrule the center psychiatrist.

Brooks' longtime psychiatrist, Michael Liebowitz of Manhattan, said at the hearing Monday that he prescribed very large doses of the tranquilizer Ativan because it was medically necessary in Brooks' case and prevented his panic attacks. A jail administrator, however, has testified Brooks showed no signs of acute stress.

Brooks was transferred two weeks ago to the center from the Nassau jail after correction officers found him attempting to smuggle in 23 Ativan tablets in his underwear, along with a pen concealed in a body cavity.

The center psychiatrist said, after speaking to Liebowitz, she found that not only was Ativan inappropriate for Brooks, but the prescribed dosage was three times the normal dosage, Seybert said.