COURT OF TEARS
Victim’s mom wails as gory details revealed at Qns. jogger slay trial
Court watchers gasped and a victim’s mother wailed Monday when a Queens prosecutor showed jurors grisly crime scene photos at the trial of a man accused of strangling and sexually abusing a young jogger out for an afternoon run.
Cathie Vetrano sobbed and clutched a cross as Queens Assistant District Attorney Brad Leventhal went through the last moments of her daughter Karina Vetrano’s life, describing in horrifying detail the battle she waged before her attacker literally choked the life out of her in a park near her Howard Beach home.
Defendant Chanel Lewis, 22, watched the grieving mother and nervously bit his nails as Leventhal, in his opening statement, offered sordid details of how the suspect allegedly murdered and sexually assaulted Vetrano.
“She was attacked brutally,” Leventhal told jurors and families who filled the gallery in the courtroom. “Her attacker struggled with her. He pummeled her. He strangled her. He put his legs on her chest. Then she fought for her life. She struggled to get away.”
But Lewis overpowered her, Leventhal said. “And he strangled her until she could not struggle anymore. He strangled her until she was dead.”
The graphic photos showed Vetrano’s almost completely naked body on its side, her face down.
After the photos were shown, the judge called for a five-minute recess.
Leventhal later described the agony of the victim’s father, Phil Vetrano, who screamed out in horror when he found his daughter’s body hours after she went missing.
Officers who were also searching the thick brush nearby immediately ran and caught up with him, in what suddenly became an active crime scene.
Vetrano lifted his daughter’s lifeless body, Leventhal said. But police pulled him away from her.
“Sorry, Sir, you have to leave her. You have to let her go. I’m sorry, Sir, you have to leave her,” Leventhal said, recalling the cops’ pleas.
“He was completely destroyed, as one can imagine,” testified Detective Timothy Gentz, the trial’s first witness.
Leventhal described Karina Vetrano as a “young, vibrant, athletic woman,” who went out for an afternoon jog, as she had done many times before. She had asked her father if he wanted to come along, but he said no.
“She says ‘See you later,’ to her dad and left her home for a later afternoon jog,” Leventhal said. “It was one from which she never returned.”
Leventhal said Lewis carried Vetrano’s bloodied body into a thick weeded area about 40 feet off the trail, and dumped her body facedown.
He then discarded the victim’s phone and earbuds and threw her sneakers into the weeds, Leventhal said..
“This innocent victim was mercilessly beaten, and brutally killed,” Leventhal said. “She was killed by a person she had never seen before. This woman was Karina Vetrano.”
Prosecutors had said Lewis’ taped confession should make this an easy decision for jurors deciding the suspect’s fate.
But Lewis’ lawyers have said the confession was coerced, and should not be admissible.
“This case was about rushing to judgment, about making assumptions,” said Lewis’ attorney, Jenny Chung.
“There will be no eyewitnesses,” she told jurors. “Nobody will come here and say, ‘I saw that. I was there. I saw that.’ ”
Chung also said there were no fingerprints belonging to Lewis at the crime scene and that DNA testing is not error-proof.
She asked jurors to “put aside your empathy and pay attention to the evidence.”
Vetrano, 30, was murdered Aug. 2, 2016, while she jogged through Spring Creek Park.
Cops arrested Lewis in February 2017.