THROWBACK THURSDAY: ‘CUFF JUSTICE’ FOR COP KILLER
Here’s a throwback to my first big, exclusive photograph for the New York Post, July 13, 2007. That’s when I chased a pair of alleged cop killers to the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania and caught cops pulling one of them, Robert Ellis, out of the forest.
It was an exclusive. I beat one of the Daily News’ best news photographers that day, Todd Maisel.
Austen Fenner was the Post’s reporter I worked with on the report. Fenner was one of the newspaper’s few black journalists. We found the cops who collared Ellis in a nearby diner, Ham & Eggs in a Pan. They gave us the scoop on how they put the dead cop’s handcuffs on the perp.
Fenner later sued the Post for racial discrimination, but lost.
Ellis was acquitter of the murder, but convicted of illegal gun possession and sentenced to 40 years. His two alleged co-defendants, Dexter Bostic and Lee Woods, were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
By AUSTIN FENNER
The handcuffs belonging to gravely wounded Officer Russel Timoshenko yesterday were slapped on the wrists of a vicious thug who allegedly ambushed him— by a city detective who was among the first cops who rushed to the rookie’s side.
The manhunt team, headed by NYPD Detective Peter Manceri, nabbed suspected shooter Robert Ellis after a brief foot chase when he was flushed out of his grassy hideout along a Pennsylvania highway by a police dog. Manceri then shackled Ellis with handcuffs belonging to Timoshenko, who was carrying them early Monday when he and fellow cop Herman Yan were shot during a vehicle stop in Crown Heights.
Manceri was among several cops responding to that shooting, and traveled in the unmarked car that carried Timoshenko to Kings County Hospital, where the officer remained in critical condition yesterday, two bullets lodged in his head.
Early yesterday, a large search party, which included 50 police cars and a SWAT team, walked along I-80 hunting for Ellis.
“There he is!” shouted a U.S. marshal at about 8 a.m. when Ellis broke and ran from heavy brush in the median after an NYPD dog named Scooby caught a whiff of the convicted rapist and began barking.
“He was laying down on the ground. The dog hit his scent,” said an NYPD cop there.
Ellis, 34, who was carrying a jar of peanut butter, was run to ground and captured. On Wednesday afternoon, Ellis’ alleged accomplice, 34-year-old Dexter Bostic, had been caught in the same highway median, about 200 feet from where Ellis was hiding.
Likewise, Bostic’s wrists were braceleted with cuffs belonging to Yan, the other shooting victim,
who has been released from the hospital after treatment for a gunshot wound to his arm.
After Ellis’ capture yesterday, two Brooklyn prosecutors flew on an NYPD helicopter to the Pennsylvania State Police barracks in the Poconos, where they took a videotaped statement from him.
Ellis denied being one of the shooters, sources said. Both Bostic—a convicted rapist and armed robber—and Ellis waived extradition yesterday afternoon. Shortly afterward, they were put into unmarked NYPD cars and driven to Brooklyn. They were met with hard stares from about 50 officers who lined up outside of the 71st Precinct station house just after 6 p.m.
Bostic and Ellis put their heads down and said nothing as they were brought inside.
Each man was charged with two counts of first-degree attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, hindering an investigation, criminal possession of a weapon and tampering with physical evidence. Bostic was also charged with violating his parole.
Their alleged accomplice, 29-year-old Lee Woods, was caught Monday. Woods has told cops he was driving a stolen BMW X5 early Monday, looking to sell guns with Bostic and Ellis, when the cops pulled them over after seeing the SUV bore another vehicle’s license plate, sources said.
The guns cops recovered included a .45, which belonged to a man in Virginia, and two 9mm weapons, one purchased in Tennessee, the other in Alabama.
Woods also has claimed that both Bostic and Ellis fired at the officers from inside the SUV when the cops approached, sources said.
Bostic and Ellis fled New York Monday morning after enlisting a friend to drive them to the Port Jefferson, L.I., ferry, which they took to Bridgeport, Conn. The friend then drove them to Tarrytown, where the fugitives were spotted on a store surveillance video buying food they apparently planned to live on after their friend dropped them off in Pennsylvania.
That friend—who apparently did not know they were fugitives—told his brother, a housing cop, about the trip after returning to New York. That cop—who attended the Police Academy with Timoshenko—brought his brother to police to reveal what he had done, and that information led directly to the fugitives’ capture.
Additional reporting by Murray Weiss, Larry Celona and Perry Chiaramonte