USPS Driver: Ian Clement
She squeezed his hand.
Visibly straining to keep his emotions in check on the witness stand this morning, the brother of noted attorney Alan Dershowitz, himself a lawyer, described rushing to his wife's side as she lay dying besides her crushed bicycle on W. 29th Street -- the victim, prosecutors say, of a callous hit-and-run by a postal driver in a seven-ton truck.
The inseparable couple had been bicycling past a busy postal service depot last summer when the wife fell beneath the rear right wheel of driver Ian Clement, whose trial began today in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Surveillance video shows Clement pulling to the side twice for a total of some three minutes before ultimately driving off.
"I held her hand, and said a few things to her, and she squeezed my hand back, so I felt that there was some communication," Nathan Dershowitz, 70, testified of his wife, Marilyn, 68, also a lawyer.
Marilyn -- a private practice mediator who was his wife of almost five decades and mother to his two children -- was bleeding from her eyes, ears and mouth, and had tire marks over her shoulder and back, according to witness accounts. Her helmet was crushed.
Later, at the hospital, after doctors said she would not survive, "I went in and I spent about five, ten minutes," he said, still struggling to keep his composure. "I was just talking to Marilyn and she wasn't talking back.
"Then I just kissed her, and went out."
The poignant testimony followed prosecution opening statements in which assistant district attorney Erin LaFarge decried a chaotic, post-accident scene in which vehicles were stopping, horns were honking, and people were running screaming toward the prone and bleeding victim -- all visible and audible to Clement as he remained parked nearby.
"He knew, or should have known, that someone was hurt," the prosecutor told jurors. "He hears the horrified screaming of people behind him," she said. "He hears honking, sees people getting out of their cars. He does nothing."
Defense lawyers are insisting that Clement simply didn't know he'd hit the poor woman -- and that nobody told him, even after he pulled over just past the scene for a total of three minutes.
Clement left the chaotic scene believing he was not involved, insisted defense lawyer John Arlia in his own opening statement. Otherwise -- given his clean driving record and utter lack of alcohol in his system -- why else would Clement just drive away?
"When you wait three minutes and nobody approaches your truck, it is natural to assume you're not involved," Arlia told jurors.
Alan Dershowitz -- the Harvard Law School professor and former O.J. Simpson Dream Teamer famous for overturning the conviction of Claus von Bülow -- was not physically present in the courtroom, but the defense lawyer summoned him up, none-the-less, apparently to suggest that the prosecution was pursuing the case in part due to pressure by the influential attorney.
"Did your brother talk to the District Attorney's office?" the defense lawyer asked the widower.
"I don't know," came the answer. "Are you talking about Cy Vance or are you talking about someone from the District Attorney's office?
"I'm talking about someone from the District Attorney's office," the lawyer responded.
"I believe he did," the widower answered. "I have no further questions," the defense lawyer snapped.
Clement could be imprisoned for as long as seven years if convicted of a single count of leaving the scene of a fatal accident, a charge that requires prosecutors to prove Clement knew or should have known that he'd been involved in an incident that could have caused personal injury
NY POST
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