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Witness tells of aftermath of Sean Bell shooting

By MATTHEW CHAYES and JOSEPH MALLIA | joseph.mallia@newsday.com

2:00 PM EDT, March 13, 2008

A Queens man testified Thursday how he and his wife were jolted awake by a fusillade of bullets down the block -- the shots fired by the three police detectives who are on trial for killing Sean Bell and wounding his friends.

Bermardino Dossantos of Jamaica, who lived on the block, peered out his window and walked outside, saying he heard the sound of eight or 10 bullets and saw one of the wounded men.

"I see a man. He got the belly down to the concrete. He got the handcuffs down to the back. He got blood to the head," said Dossantos, a construction worker who took work helping build the new Yankee stadium and testified wearing his florescent orange vest.

NYPD procedure is to automatically handcuff people who have been shot at.

Some of the 50 bullets fired by police grazed Dossantos' SUV and left two dime-size scars on the car.

Earlier, attention turned to photos and witness testimony about police officers' guns.

A crime-scene detective testified about blood found on one officer's weapon, and photos of the all the police guns in the shooting were displayed as evidence.

NYPD Det. Christopher Florio testified that dried blood flaked off the side of the Glock semiautomatic pistol belonging to Det. Gescard Isnora when Florio went to inventory it. The witness testimony did not specify whose blood was on the gun.

Isnora, one of the officers on trial, faces several charges including manslaughter in Bell's death.

With Bell's fiancee Nicole Paultre Bell, Bell's parents and the Rev. Al Sharpton in the courtroom gallery, photos of the firearms belonging to the officers connected to the shooting were displayed as evidence. These were Isnora's Glock, Det. Marc Cooper's Glock, and Det. Michael Oliver's Sig Sauer, which he fired 31 times. Both Sig Sauer magazines used by Oliver were in the photo of his gun, and unlike many of the other weapons photographed and displayed in court, the magazines were empty.

Speaking outside State Supreme Court in Kew Gardens during a break in the trial, Sharpton spoke about the dried blood fragments found on Detective Isnora's gun.

"I know that there's usually there's a smoking gun that hurts the case. The bloody gun's gonna hurt this case 'cuz you had to be pretty close for blood to get on the gun and you don't walk toward people if you think that you're in danger that they're shooting at you. You walk toward people to finish them off," Sharpton said.

Testimony will continue Thursday in the State Supreme Court in Kew Gardens in the fatal shooting of Bell and the wounding of two of his friends. The three were leaving a nightclub after Bell's bachelor party in November 2006.

"We heard pop -- and pop, pop, pop," Brian Donnelly, one of the Port Authority police officers in the station that night, testified earlier this week. "I took a dive to cover. ... I was telling everybody to get down."

Donnelly estimated that the whole shooting lasted 20 to 30 seconds and that he heard about 30 shots. Police fired 50 shots.

After the shooting subsided, Donnelly said he and his partner, John Cea, who also testified yesterday, went to secure the ballistics evidence. Oliver, 36, and Isnora, 29, face first-degree manslaughter and assault charges. Cooper, 40, faces misdemeanor reckless endangerment charges.

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