Reliving the anguish
Karina’s mother on stand
The mother of slain Queens jogger Karina Vetrano did her best to keep her composure Tuesday as she relived for jurors the awful moment she learned her daughter had been murdered.
“I just remember I was screaming in the street,” said Cathie Vetrano, who did not testify at the first trial of accused killer Chanel Lewis, which ended with a hung jury in November.
“I was screaming in the street and an ambulance tried to put me in because I just had surgery. I saw my husband coming down the block and we just grabbed each other crying,” Cathie said.
She and husband Phil Vetrano, who discovered the body of his beaten daughter on a running path near their Howard Beach home hours after she was killed, were inconsolable, she said.
“[Phil] came down the block. We grabbed each other and were just crying,” she said.
The mom also described her harrowing attempts to reach her daughter by phone before the couple’s worst fears were confirmed.
“It was unusual that Karina was gone that length of time,” she said. “It was unusual that she wasn’t answering her phone. I started dialing her from my home phone. I really don’t know how many times. I kept pressing redial. It could have been five times. It could have been 20 times.”
Cathie, who once during an earlier court hearing shouted at Lewis, “Now your nightmare begins,” mostly kept her cool during her day on the stand — except when a defense lawyer flubbed the pronunciation of her child’s name. “Excuse me, her name is Kar
ina,” Vetrano snapped after Lewis’ lawyer, Robert Moeller, twice referred to her as “Katrina.”
Prosecutors are retrying Lewis after their first attempt ended when a seven-woman, five-man jury announced it was deadlocked after just 13 hours of deliberation.
Opening statements in the retrial took place Monday, and Tuesday was Cathie’s first time taking the stand at either trial.
The brave mom briefly broke down in tears when she was shown a photo of her daughter.
“That’s my beautiful baby,” she said, her voice quavering.
Before her testimony, Vetrano was seen in the courtroom with a cross on her lap and her palms facing up as she silently mouthed what appeared to be a prayer.
Lewis’ mother was on the other side of the courtroom reading a Bible.
Vetrano was found strangled and sexually assaulted on a jogging path near her Howard Beach home in 2016.
Lewis admitted to the killing in a videotaped confession, and his DNA was found on Vetrano’s body, according to investigators.
His lawyers, however, have said the confession was coerced and the genetic evidence is unreliable.