‘DIAGNOSIS DEAD’
Village gunman’s gay-slay rant on vid
Manhattan jurors were shown a cellphone video Thursday of homophobic killer Elliot Morales confessing to his crime before trying to lick the sidewalk in front of cops.
“I f king shot him dead!” Morales shouts in the video, cackling as several NYPD officers restrain him facefirst on the pavement.
“Diagnosis dead, doctor!” he continues, laughing to the police. “They don’t teach you that in the academy, right?”
Morales then tries to lick the pavement and lifts his head as if he’s about to slam it in on the concrete, but a cop stops him.
Morales, 36, is representing himself at his murder trial in Manhattan Supreme Court for the hatecrime slaying of a stranger, Mark Carson, in Greenwich Village on May 18, 2013.
In court on Thursday, Morales, wearing spectacles, a tie and gray cardigan, bizarrely asked Officer Michael Morrin, who recorded the video, “Was I speaking to a doctor?”
“Not that I know of,” the cop replied from the witness stand.
Asking about the video, Morales said, “Officer, does that seem like normal behavior to you?”
“To my standards, no,” the cop answered.
The officer said that when he first arrived on the scene at Third Street near MacDougal Street, Morales told him: “I shot him dead. He deserved it. He was acting tough in front of his bitch.”
The statement prompted Morrin to whip out his cellphone and record Morales, he said.
The trouble began earlier that night when a drunken Morales was standing in front of a pizza shop on Sixth Avenue and snarled at Carson and his pal, “What are you, gay wrestlers?” and called them “fag ts.”
The men turned to confront him. After a heated exchanged, Morales walked around the cor ner onto Eighth Street and the two men followed. Moments later, Morales blasted Carson in the head with a Taurus .38caliber gun and fled.
Officer Henry Huot testified that he spotted Morales running south on MacDougal and chased him on foot. Morales turned onto West Third Street. He pointed the gun at Huot, the officer testified.
But Morales fumbled with the gun, and Huot tackled him.
Morales is charged with seconddegree murder as a hate crime, menacing a police officer and weapons possession. He faces 30 to life in prison on the top charge if convicted.