New York Daily News
(TNS)
The man accused of murdering Queens EMS Lt. Alison Russo has been convicted of murder — despite brazenly denying stabbing the first responder to death just steps from her Queens FDNY station, officials said Tuesday.
It took a jury less than an hour on Monday to convict Peter Zisopoulos of second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
He faces 25 years to life in prison when he’s sentenced on June 30.
The verdict was read before a gallery filled with EMS members and Russo’s family, who gathered together outside court after the verdict.
“This brings closure for my family. Nothing can erase the pain,” Russo’s brother Craig Fuoco told reporters. “It’s tough to explain. Happy that I think justice was done. Happy to start to move forward. But Alison will continue to be missed. It’s continuing to be difficult to move on but we’ll find a way.”
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said she hopes the verdict will give Russo’s family and coworkers “solace as we continue to grieve.”
“Alison Russo was a long-time public servant who cared deeply for the people of New York,” Katz said. “Our city is still in mourning for a woman who saved countless lives as a member of the FDNY EMS and as a volunteer with her local ambulance company on Long Island.”
FDNY Fire Commissioner Robert Tucker, a former Queens prosecutor, hailed the conviction.
“The people have now spoken, and the jury brought back a just verdict for this brutal crime,” Tucker said.
The verdict was reached late Monday after closing arguments.
On Friday, Zisopoulos took the stand and claimed he never left his home the day Russo was killed — even though he stabbed the beloved EMT lieutenant in full view of witnesses and surveillance cameras on Sept. 29, 2022.
“I didn’t go outside,” he said of the day Russo was murdered.
The murder suspect, dressed in an orange city Department of Correction jumpsuit, claimed he didn’t know what had happened until cops were banging on his door.
Russo was on duty near her stationhouse in Astoria when Zisopoulos, then 34, ambushed her and repeatedly stabbed her with a serrated kitchen knife. She was taken to a nearby hospital, where she died.
He stabbed Russo more than 20 times. At the opening of his case last week, Queens Assistant District Attorney Jonathan Selkowe said Zisopoulos “had the desire to kill” when he knifed Russo to death.
“He cut through her flesh, cut through her rib cage and cut through her vital organs,” Selkowe told the jurors. “He punctured her right lung. He punctured her left lung. He punctured her heart. He punctured her liver. Twenty times, stabbed her in broad daylight on a public street in front of witnesses and under the watch of surveillance cameras.”
The killer ran up to Russo as she stood on the corner and attacked her just as she noticed him, video viewed by the Daily News showed.
He knocked Russo to the ground as he lunged at her with a knife, then repeatedly stabbed her as she lay on the sidewalk. He then ran to his apartment and barricaded himself inside for about an hour before police talked him into surrendering.
Zispoulous was in the middle of a mental and emotional crisis at the time of the attack, officials said. His mental health status has been the subject of several court hearings over the past three years, with Judge Ushir Pandit-Durant in June 2023 deeming him unfit to participate in his defense. But he was found fit that October and again earlier this month, despite findings by two court-appointed medical experts.
The trial went ahead after Pandit-Durant determined that Zispoulous appeared to meet the legal standard for mental competence since he understood the details of the trial proceedings.
Russo, a 24-year FDNY veteran, had been expecting to retire in a few months when she was slain. She was appointed to the FDNY in March 1998 as an emergency medical technician and was promoted to paramedic in 2002 and to lieutenant in 2016.
Former FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh posthumously promoted Russo to captain during the victim’s funeral on Long Island.
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