By Laura Italiano
The New York Post
NEW YORK — Prosecutors in the “rape cops” trial yesterday called on an ambulance worker to refute Officer Kenneth Moreno’s witness-stand boast of having heroically used his EMS lifesaving expertise three months before he allegedly raped a young fashion exec in her East Village apartment.
In testimony earlier this week, Moreno had gone so far as to make chest-compression gestures with both hands as he told jurors of the purported failed resuscitation attempt on East 11th Street in September 2008.
“I worked on him,” Moreno had testified of 82-year-old heart-attack victim Jimmy Daniels, describing how Moreno and a fire lieutenant labored in vain to save the man’s life.
But prosecutors called an EMS worker from that incident to make their point that Moreno has no problem staring a jury in the face and launching into a series of highly embroidered lies.
The EMS worker, Manuel Karamanos, looking at his records from the scene, told jurors that no cops or firefighters laid a hand on the elderly patient.
In fact, the patient was found face down on his bedroom floor without a pulse. If anyone else had used CPR on the man, they’d have turned him over first, the EMS worker testified.
“Were you or you partner assisted in administering CPR by any member of the New York City Police Department?” prosecutor Randolph Clarke asked.
The EMS worker consulted his records from that night and answered, “No. We were not.”
Moreno had brought up the purported valiant lifesaving incident when asked why he hadn’t called an ambulance for the intoxicated alleged victim in the rape case.
Moreno, 43, and alleged lookout partner Officer Franklin Mata, 29, are both charged with raping the then-27-year-old Gap exec after being dispatched to her apartment building to help the very drunk woman out of a taxicab.
Moreno had told jurors he didn’t call an ambulance for the woman in part because drunks take up EMS workers’ valuable time. Moreno then launched into his Daniels anecdote, testifying that “we were calling for an ambulance and for 20 minutes they didn’t respond.”
EMS finally arrived, Moreno claimed, as he and the FDNY lieutenant had “just pronounced him” dead.
“I asked where they were at, and they said they were transporting a drunk that was giving them a hard time,” Moreno had told jurors.
But the EMS worker told jurors yesterday that his records indicate there was no such other patient — drunk or otherwise — immediately prior to the Daniels cardiac case.
Prosecutors called one other rebuttal witness yesterday — the DA’s chief investigator on the case, Edward Tacchi, who pointed out a second discrepancy in Moreno’s testimony.
Moreno had told jurors he had tried to protest his innocence to Tacchi.
But the investigator told jurors that no such conversation took place and Moreno lawyered up as soon as he learned there was a sexual-assault allegation against him.
Summations in the 6-week-long case are expected this morning.
Copyright 2011 N.Y.P. Holdings, Inc.
All Rights Reserved