NYPD Officer Russel Timoshenko

dedicated to Officer Russel Timoshenko With his parents and fellow officers from the 71st Precinct at his bedside, a 23-year-old police officer who had been on the force only a year and a half died yesterday, five days after he was shot in the face during a traffic stop in Brooklyn. Officer Timoshenko died while on life support machines that allowed him to breathe. Each of the two bullets that struck Officer Timoshenko cut across his spinal cord, just beneath his brain, doctors said, which left him unable to breathe on his own or to move his muscles. After tests determined yesterday that he had no brain activity, the doctors pronounced him dead and the respirator was turned off. Officer Timoshenko, who was born in Belarus, arrived in the United States in the early 1990s, when he was 9. He graduated from Tottenville High School in Staten Island and was a gifted and popular economics student at City College. Tall and blond, he had an easy laugh, played on the lacrosse team and liked to dance. A professor said he assumed his student would graduate, get an M.B.A. and go into business. Instead, Officer Timoshenko abruptly dropped out of college to become a police officer, an act that stunned some of his classmates and professors. Those closest to him, however, said that police work had all along been one of his passions. In his short career, he made 15 arrests. At 2:30 a.m. Monday, Officer Timoshenko and Officer Yan, 26, were on patrol in the Prospect-Lefferts Garden section of Brooklyn. They pulled over a black BMW on Lefferts Avenue. The computer in their squad car showed that the BMW's license plate belonged on a Mitsubishi. The BMW turned out to have been stolen from a dealership on Long Island. Officer Timoshenko got out first. He approached the passenger side of the car, while Officer Yan, a few steps behind, approached the driver's side. Without warning, at least one of the BMW's occupants fired through a rolled-down window. Officer Timoshenko was struck twice, the impact of the bullets sending him sprawling backwards. Officer Yan returned fire and was struck in the arm and chest — his life likely saved by his protective vest. He was able to call for help. Within a minute, another officer got Officer Timoshenko into his car and began speeding to the hospital, where doctors opened his airway to restore breathing. Doctors took a CAT scan of the officer's head, chest and abdomen and found severe damage. He was bleeding profusely from the mouth, where one of the bullets had entered, and blood had pooled in his lungs. Doctors gave him a tracheotomy to aid his breathing and brought him to the intensive care unit, where they noted that his brain had begun to swell. He became the third New York City police officer that year to die of gunshot wounds.

Channel: People & Blogs
Uploaded: July 29, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Author: leomemorial

Length: 03:53
Rating: 4.81
Views: 11693

Tags: Memorial  NYPD  Police  Russel  Timoshenko  

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