RIKERS DEATH TALE

Guard testimony

A beefy former Rikers Island correction officer broke down in tears Friday as he explained to a jury how a colleague repeatedly kicked an infirm inmate in the head despite his pleas to stop.

“I heard him scream, ‘ You motherf--ker,’ and he kicked him real hard in the side of the head,” a choked-up Anthony Torres recalled of the 2012 altercation between guard Brian Coll and Ronald Spear, which prosecutors say killed Spear.

“He kicked him in the head, and he did it again,” Torres told the Manhattan federal jury overseeing Coll’s trial.

“I stuck my arm out to try to stop it,” the muscular guard said while fighting back tears. “I said something like . . . to stop.”

When Coll finally stopped, it was only to grab Spear by the head and tell him off, the distraught former officer testified.

“This is what you get for f-king with me. Remember I did this,” Coll allegedly told Spear, who was housed in Rikers’ medical ward due to a bad heart and failing liver.

Prosecutors said Coll’s beating was so savage that it caused Spear’s brain to bleed. Coll has been charged with abusing his power and violating Spear’s constitutional rights.

Coll, 47, faces a potential sentence of life in prison.

Defense lawyer Joshua Dratel told the jury in opening remarks that the government cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Spear’s death was linked to Coll because the inmate was in poor health and may have died before the kicking started.

Prosecutors argued that Coll went beyond reasonable force when he started kicking Spear after the inmate was already restrained and lying on the floor.

“That should have been the end of it,” prosecutor Jeanette Vargas told the jury.

“But that was not the end,” she said, because Coll then “kicked Mr. Spear in the head again and again and again.”

Earlier, a witness testified that Coll had threatened to kick Spear “to death.”

Shawn Fraser, a Rikers inmate, told the jury that Coll became “furious” after Spear told Coll “to suck his d--k,” prompting Coll to tell Spear that “he should kick him to death.”

Torres and another guard have pleaded guilty to helping Coll cover up the beating with a story that Spear had attacked Coll with a cane.

The beating has already cost the city $2.75 million.