By Alex Ginsberg
The teenage son of two Lithuanian immigrants murdered in their Astoria apartment on Easter Sunday 1997 told a jury Tuesday in State Supreme Court in Kew Gardens he saw his mother’s former boyfriend flee the bedroom only moments after shots were fired.
“I saw Abel running out of my parents’ bedroom,” said 16-year-old Lukas Dainys, referring to the defendant, Abel Rosas.
According to the boy’s testimony, Rosas lived with Lukas and his mother in the ground-floor apartment at 23-17 38th St. for about a year until the boy’s parents, who had been separated, reconciled. Lukas described the defendant as friendly, at one point identifying a photo he took of Rosas and his mother Yurate Dainene at the Statue of Liberty.
But Rosas went into a jealous rage, prosecutors said, when the father, Rimgaudas Dainys, moved back in with the family and took his place. He now faces two counts of first-degree murder as well as weapons, burglary and child endangerment charges for allegedly shooting the couple as they slept in their bed in the early morning of March 30, 1997.
If convicted, he could face 25 years-to-life in prison.
Lukas Dainys was 9 years old at the time the crime took place. The thin, sandy-haired teenager spoke softly for about an hour and a half as he related the events of Easter Sunday six years ago, more than once prompting Judge Randall Eng to urge him to speak up.
Although Lukas admitted that many of the details of the tragedy were faint to him now, he had no difficulty recalling the one occasion, a few weeks before the crime, when the defendant called the house at least eight times looking for his mother. He also remembered with clarity hearing three gunshots and entering his parents’ bedroom after the intruder fled.
“I saw my parents laying in bed,” he said. “There were (sic) a lot of blood and my father was choking on blood.”
Lukas also told the jury that he did not name Rosas during interviews with police because he was afraid “that he will come back.” In fact, the boy said he continued to be scared for a period of about two years, even when he had returned to his native Lithuania.
Rosas betrayed no emotion during any of the testimony. The 36-year-old Mexican immigrant has remained in prison since his arrest in 1997 and through two previous trials, his attorney said.
The jury was unable to agree on a verdict during a 1998 trial in which the prosecution made its case without Lukas’ testimony. Instead, prosecutors relied on a signed confession by Rosas admitting to the double murder.
But Rosas’ attorney, David Cohen, argued that his client had been coerced after being held for more than 26 hours in the 114th Precinct station house.
“This was a rush to judgment by police,” Cohen said in an interview. “Once they found out my client was a prior boyfriend of the deceased, they focused the entire investigation on him.”
In a second trial in 1999, prosecutors buttressed their case with the son’s testimony and the jury convicted Rosas.
But an appellate judge threw out that decision last fall following the revelation that notes from an interview between investigators and the couple’s son were not made available to the defense. In those notes, the Lukas appeared to tell officers that he thought the person he saw in the apartment was his mother.
Asked about that inconsistency by Cohen during Friday’s session, Lukas denied he ever mistook the figure for his mother. And during a second direct examination, Assistant District Attorney Carmencita Gutierrez asked, “At any time did you think the figure that ran out of your parents’ bedroom was your mother?”
“No,” the boy said.
In other testimony, the jury also heard a police officer, Sgt. James Poulos, testify last Thursday that he arrived at the gruesome scene to find a “little boy with tears in his eyes, crying.” He added that Lukas was trembling and clearly in shock.
Poulos recalled finding a three-foot steel re-bar, a thin metal rod used in construction, which the defendant allegedly used to break open the door to the ground floor apartment.
Reach reporter Alex Ginsberg by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 157.
