Karina’s dad tells of tragic search
Agonizing testimony at suspect’s 2nd trial
The heartbroken father of a jogger strangled near their Howard Beach home recounted in excruciating detail how he found his daughter’s battered body after a desperate search.
Philip Vetrano sat on the witness stand Wednesday in Queens Supreme Court and was handed gruesome crime scene photos of his daughter Karina Vetrano, who was 30 years old when she was murdered.
As he examined them, Assistant District Attorney Brad Leventhal asked whether her teeth were cracked and chipped before her death.
“Looks like Karina’s mouth, but beat to hell,” Vetrano said. “She took extremely, extremely great pride in her teeth.
“They weren’t cracked,” he went on. “There were no pieces missing. They were perfect teeth. These are not.”
It was the second time Vetrano testified to a jury about being the first to find his daughter’s body laying among the tall weeds of Spring Creek Park, just blocks from their home.
The first murder trial of Chanel Lewis, who is accused of killing Karina on Aug. 2, 2016, when he was 20, ended with a hung jury and mistrial last November.
Philip testified then, through tears, how he declined to accompany his daughter on her run because of a sore back. Usually — two or three times a week — the two would jog together for about a mile.
“She said, ‘Daddy I’m going out for a run, do you want to come with me?’” he said during his testimony at the first trial.
“I can’t, my back hurts,” he replied.
“Are you gonna go there?” he then asked about the weedy, isolated area in Spring Creek Park. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
On Wednesday, prosecutors seemed careful to emphasize that when Philip found Karina’s body, he had very little contact with it.
Vetrano described the police response to him touching her body as “instantaneous.”
“I probably was on her shoulder,” he said, after being asked where he put his hands. “I just grabbed her, I don’t even know if I got her all the way up.”
Leventhal focused the jurors’ attention on Karina’s condition when she was found. In the dozen or so photos he showed them, jurors saw a bruised and bloodied body, a deep wound to her eye and an image of her right hand gripping weeds.
As the pictures were shown, Karina’s mother Catherine Vetrano covered her ears and looked down, alternating her gaze between a prayer book and a photograph of her daughter she brought to court with her.
Catherine, who completed her own testimony Tuesday, spoke briefly to reporters after her husband testified.
“I’m feeling just like I do every day,” she said. “Sorrow, every day of my life.”