My beau killed self
Slay susp’s lawyer says she had ‘no motive in the world’
THE CRIMINAL defense lawyer for a Brooklyn woman accused of fatally shooting her lover in the eye is claiming police have the story wrong and that the victim committed suicide.
“Tiffany Brown, who had no motive in the world to do such thing, is collateral damage,” Howard Greenberg told the Daily News.
Brown, 27, was arrested after allegedly blasting her boyfriend, Robert Bosalavage, inside their first-floor apartment on Avenue K near E. 39th St. in Flatlands about 5 a.m. on Friday, cops said. Medics took Bosalavage, 39, to Kings County Hospital, where he died about 12 hours later.
“Mr. Bosalavage, who had every no-good reason in the world, committed suicide,” Greenberg said.
“He was under enormous pressure, what with trying to get out of a loveless marriage to someone else and what with the government after him for taxes. He in the past repeatedly threatened to hurt himself and had suicidal ideations repeatedly in the past.”
Greenberg said his client, who he says works as a line cook at a Manhattan steakhouse, tried to help her troubled boyfriend throughout their relationship. “He had refused repeatedly all of Tiffany Brown’s entreaties to get himself into therapy. He had repeatedly refused her entreaties to get rid of the gun, to remove the firearm that he brought into the home,” Greenberg argued. “It was Tiffany Brown who called 911.”
Cops who came to the apartment saw Bosalavage lifeless on the bedroom floor with a gunshot wound to the face, court papers say. They recovered a .22-caliber spent shell casing and a rifle, which Brown had moved and returned to the spot where Bosalavage usually kept it.
“She was trying to put things back together, which was impossible to do,” Greenberg said. “There is no motive. Anyone who wished for his death wouldn’t have called 911. Anyone wishing for his death would have hightailed it out of there. Why kill him then call 911?”
Cops reviewed hours of surveillance video provided by the building’s superintendent. Brown and Bosalavage can be seen returning home together about 10:45 p.m. the night before the shooting, according to court papers. No one else came or went after that.
Greenberg said Brown initially answered some questions from cops. She told them the couple had been watching TV in the bedroom, then she went to the living room, and as she returned, she saw Bosalavage fall to the floor. When cops asked her if he’d been shot from outside the apartment, she said no.
But then, after giving a partial statement, Brown clammed up under advice from a Legal Aid lawyer initially assigned to her, according to Greenberg.
“I would have gone down there and shepherded her through a lengthy and detailed account with the police, and had that happened, I don’t believe she would have been charged,” he said. “So now we intend to tell it to the grand jury where I expect the People (to) dismiss the case.”
The alleged killing was Brown’s arrest in the city, according to sources. The couple lived alone and had no kids. Detectives charged Brown with murder and criminal possession of a weapon. She was ordered held without bail Saturday at a Brooklyn Criminal Court arraignment. first