Original subtitles

A cop is shot in Brooklyn,

and he's in critical condition.

Just shot right in the face.

Pulling over the car for improper plate,

how many times have you done that?

There's was a lot of emotion, a lot of anger,

a little bit of fear.

It's personal because it could have been me, you.

We're all in danger until we get these guys in custody.

They're on the run.

They've got nothing to lose.

This is top-of-the-news manhunt.

I've never encountered anything on this scale.

You've got hundreds of cops,

dogs, helicopters

to bring justice here.

We're the line.

We're the wall between perps

and civilians.

When you attack that wall and when you attack us,

we're coming to get you.

- Yeah. - We're coming to get you.

In America, we're the first line of defense.

Drug busts, serial killers, armed robbers,

predators of every kind...

We take them off the streets.

People love telling stories about us.

They don't know the half of it.

We save that for when we're talking cop-to-cop.

This is "PD True."

So, you know, Lou, you're at home, and you get the call.

Kenneth Corey is a 34-year veteran of the NYPD,

who worked his way up from patrol

to the highest-ranking uniformed officer.

Lieutenant McCray calls me from Homicide,

tells me there's two cops shot in the 7-1.

And that one is critical, and he's calling everybody in.

Lou Yero was one of the highest-ranking detectives

on the Brooklyn South Homicide squad and served with the NYPD

for 26 years.

First thought is, I hope it's not a homicide, right?

I hope that critical is just critical.

There's a lot of emotion, a lot of anger,

a little bit of fear.

I just--I knew that nothing I had ever been involved in

was going to be on-- on this scale of intensity.

It's personal because it could have been me, you.

Pete, when did you get pulled into this?

I wake up 2:30 in the morning, my phone's ringing.

Pete Margraf spent 17 years in the 71st precinct

in Brooklyn and went on to become

one of the most respected homicide detectives

in the NYPD.

I'm the senior detective on my squad.

You know, I got dressed, suited up, went out to the scene.

I arrive at Rogers and Lefferts,

the first crime scene.

I've never worked anything like this.

We're talking hundreds-- - Hundreds of cops.

Hundreds of cops, and that's on scene.

That's not to mention the guys who are still coming,

guys who are still conducting canvasses, guys who are being

redirected to other places.

It's TARU, it's emergency service, it's K-9.

- We're the line. - Yeah.

We're the wall between perps and civilians.

When you attack that wall, civilians aren't safe, OK?

We're all in danger until we get these guys in custody.

And you've got 38,000 cops now

that are looking at you and you.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

Right, to bring justice here.

Exactly.

There's a day care center on the corner, there's cameras.

Plates didn't match the vehicle.

Yep.

Pulling over the car for improper plate,

how many times have you done that?

Pretty routine stop.

They signal the BMW over and follow.

As it turns the corner, it stops.

Russel Timoshenko and Herman Yan,

they can't even see in the car.

No.

They're walking up on just black windows.

Russel's gun's still in the holster, so it never even--

never had a chance to even pull his gun out at that point.

Just shot right in the face.

He goes right down.

There was nothing.

There was no indication that this was going to happen.

Officer Yan returns fire, hitting the BMW,

then he is struck in the arm and in the chest.

So there was detectives from the 7-1

and from Brooklyn South Homicide a few blocks away

actually hitting a door on a separate homicide.

So they actually hear the shots.

So they respond, and they get there within seconds.

Russel is picked up, and he's thrown into the back of an RMP,

and he's taken straight to the hospital.

So was Herman.

So there's an urgency here.

If those two cops doing their job aren't safe,

aren't protected, then how can anybody be protected?

- Exactly. - Exactly.

Unfortunately, Russel Timoshenko

is in critical condition and on life support.

Herman Yan, at the hospital, rattled off

the make, model, and plate number of the car

that they had stopped. - Really?

- Yeah. - Wow.

You know what I mean? So talk about focus.

- Yeah. - You know.

Yeah.

So that was a big help, because now

we had a plate number, and we knew what we were looking for.

We are lucky that the officer's driving down

Empire Boulevard towards Kingston and Roger,

and he looks down a block.

He sees a car in the middle of the block, doors open.

So I get in my car, and I drive over there.

He discovered that was the car

we were looking for that had ballistics damage to the car.

So right there we knew that car--that's

the car that was involved.

Herman fired back and hit the car multiple times.

So that's all cordoned off.

We take the plate number and the VIN number off the car,

and that's--

we're running that to see who owns the car.

Maybe we get lucky, and the owner of the car

is actually our perpetrator. - Right.

And you got bullet holes in the car.

Yeah, bullet holes in the car.

- The back window-- - Back window is blown out.

Yeah, the back window had just, like,

shots through the window. - Shell casings?

- Yeah. - Yeah.

- Yeah. - There's a Popeye's chicken--

The Popeye's chicken box.

Yeah, the boxes on the floor.

Thank God for the Popeye's chicken.

The Popeye's chicken makes your fingers greasy.

So you find some fingerprints on the vehicle.

Yep.

K-9 shows up.

He takes a sniff out of the car, and Scooby's off.

And within a matter of minutes--

- Yeah. - we get a hit.

Scooby hits on a garbage can in a driveway from--

on Kingston--

a house.

And he hits on a sweatshirt and a bag that has three guns.

- Three guns in the bag? - Three guns in the bag.

So the dog takes you right to it.

The dog takes us right to the bag.

So now we have that scene. Yeah. We have that scene.

They've recovered-- there was an Intratec, 45,

and, I believe, a 9--so three guns now recovered.

You know, perps are in the wind for now.

So you run the plate that's on the car

that doesn't belong on the car.

Detectives make their way over to the registered owner's

address of the plate, go talk to that individual,

and, you know, my car is being repaired.

Like, I don't have a BMW.

I have a Mitsubishi, and it's being repaired

over at Five Towns Auto.

Detectives make their way over to Five Towns Auto.

They walk in and say, listen,

we got this BMW in our possession.

And the owner is like--

Dexter Bostick,

because he's done it before, he does it all the time.

He's a salesman at Five Towns Auto.

Comes in the middle of the night,

takes keys out of the rack, and takes whatever car he wants.

And then he takes the plate off of a car--

Off a car he looked at.

that some guy had dropped off for service?

Yeah.

He puts it on the BMW, and off they go.

So once that happened, then we started to do

workups on Dexter Bostick.

Dexter was in jail for rape,

robberies. - Robberies.

He was a two-time loser. He had a two violent felonies.

And he's on parole--

- He's on parole. - So he's on parole?

On parole, exactly. So he's a bad guy.

Dexter's a bad guy.

And now we have a tentative address,

and that address leads us to Nicole Bostick,

Dexter's sister in the Rockaways.

You go there to Nicole's house, and--

She says, Dexter doesn't live here.

I said, well, this is the address that he put,

you know, on his application, his employment application.

And that's the first time we encounter

Lee Woods laying on a couch.

Lee Woods is Nicole Bostick's boyfriend,

and he's a friend of her brother, Dexter.

They get to talking to Lee Woods.

"I'll help you find him," he says.

You know, that type of stuff.

And in the course of that conversation,

he actually agrees to come on in and speak to them.

But he doesn't want to be seen walking out of the building

with police, cooperating.

He doesn't want anybody to think he's a snitch.

So he wants to be handcuffed.

And they handcuff him, and he's brought into the 6-7.

And now he's in the box.

Before we go in the room, we know exactly who he is.

And we know that he's been involved in robberies,

you know-- in gunpoint robberies.

We know that he's been involved in shots fired.

We know that he has assaulted police officers

in the past while resisting arrest.

You know, this is not a good guy.

The violence in his past--

We talked right before we go into--

there's something not right

about Lee Woods coming in to help us.

We talked to Lee for a long time.

Yeah.

A lot of pizza, a lot of White Castle,

a lot of Newport cigarettes. - But what's he telling you?

"I can't believe they would do these things.

This is the type of things that they do."

I said, were you there? "No, I wasn't."

"Are you sure?" "Yes, I was."

I don't actually recall exactly what it was that he--

what he actually said, but it--it kind of, like--

how do you know that?

How do you know about the shots?

How do you know about--

The cop shooting back and that type of thing?

He goes, all right, look,

I was in a car behind the BMW

when the police pulled them over.

Right then and there, it makes no sense.

I pass the police car and the BMW,

and I make a U-turn and watching what's going on.

And I said, you know, Lee, uh, I have a little bit

of a problem with what you were telling me.

I says, you said you made a U-turn.

There's no way you made a U-turn

and watched what was going down.

It's a one-way street, man. - Yeah.

And he's just sitting there.

He's like, all right.

I was driving the car.

So now he puts himself in the BMW.

When Woods puts himself in it, that's huge.

We now have a defendant. We now have a perp.

We now have a suspect.

And he says, yeah, you know, we're out to get our jukes.

Oh, jukes?

I had never heard that before.

Yeah. - And jukes is--

- Robbery. - doing robberies.

Dex had the car, and they got picked up.

And they were basically driving around looking for victims.

So this is their job.

This is their employment. This is what they do.

They go around, and they rob people.

Who does he tell you he's in the car with?

Lee Woods is in the car with Dexter Bostick

and Robert Ellis, and they're friends.

And then he saw them the night before they were together.

And Robert Ellis--he's, you know, been no stranger

to us at all.

He's arrested for rape, arrested for robberies,

you know, violent crime.

So you got three really, really violent guys in his car.

Three violent guys whose sole purpose is to just make

everyone around them a victim.

How does he tell you it went down?

You know, he says that they get--that he sees the cops

behind them and that--

get pulled over.

The minute they pulled that car over--

unknowingly, of course--

Dexter had made up his mind that he wasn't going

back to prison for just a gun.

So if he was going back to prison--

It was going to be for more than just a gun.

Wow.

Lee Woods says--'cause he's looking in the mirror.

He says he sees that the Chinese cop walked up on him.

And he says that as the police approached the car,

he just heard the shots.

Dex shot out the front passenger window

and Ellis from the rear.

They don't even roll down the windows on the car?

They just shoot right through the closed glass?

- Yep. - Yeah.

Both the shots came through the glass.

They were tinted windows as well.

Now he's downplaying his involvement.

- Yeah. - Of course.

"I was just driving."

I didn't shoot. Robert shot from the back.

Lee heard the shots. He started driving off.

Bullets were coming through the back of the glass,

hitting the car.

He doesn't even know where they went.

They made a left, then made a right,

and then came down this block.

He heard sirens all the way around.

He goes, we got to get out of this car.

The vehicle stops.

There's video recovered from the building.

You see all individuals--

- Running. - running away from the car.

They run down Kingston,

and they go into a driveway where they dump everything.

These guys are dangerous before.

How much more dangerous are they now?

They pretty much crossed that line.

And they knew that they-- you know, nothing to lose.

So this is just a pure manhunt?

Like, they know that you're looking for them.

An NYPD apprehension team races to the last known

address of Robert Ellis.

He isn't there, but his girlfriend, Tamika,

is brought in for questioning.

She says sometime that morning Ellis comes in--

basically wakes her up, tells her, we got to get out.

He's packing stuff to leave.

He says, get dressed. Come on, let's go.

They go to a McDonald's in Queens.

They're watching the news--

it's breaking news-- two cops shot.

Ellis tells this girl Tamika that, you know,

we had something to do with this.

As they're sitting in McDonald's?

As they're sitting in McDonald's.

The last time Tamika saw Dexter and Robert was

at 10:00 a.m. at that McDonald's.

These guys just shot two cops.

Yeah.

And they're stopping at McDonald's for food?

- Yep. - How bad are these guys?

But still we had no leads.

So we put out a $64,000 reward

for any information

leading to their arrest.

We get notified of a-- - A cop.

by a member of the service.

Well, what does the cop tell you?

He says, I think my brother Billy Barnes

may have driven these guys out of town.

Wow.

They bring Billy Barnes into the precinct.

So, basically, Bostick and Ellis

put a knife to Billy Barnes and says,

now you're my hostage.

So he pretty much walks them through the whole route

they went.

They went to the ferry from Port Jefferson to Connecticut.

Go to a Stop & Shop, where they go to get food--

in Tarrytown.

Billy Barnes shows us where

he dropped off Ellis and Bostick--

just outside Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.

So this is a massive manhunt now.

- 100%. - In the Poconos.

Hundreds of cops--

- dogs, helicopters-- - Yep.

Right. Every piece of technology

that they can throw at it.

Door-to-door searches for these guys.

These guys got a two-day head start.

Yeah.

These are really dangerous guys that are out there,

and they're desperate. And they--

- Yeah, exactly. - Absolutely.

They're on the run, and they've got nothing to lose.

Exactly.

They start a search from that point on.

And so they go into the woods,

the find a little campsite-- where they found peanut butter.

Yeah, the peanut butter jar that they bought was empty.

And they found, like, a can of tuna.

But at the creek bed, the trail goes cold

until a passing motorist calls 911.

They'd say, hey, listen,

there's two male Blacks in the woods.

Bostick and Ellis have been seen 14 miles

from their initial drop spot.

U.S. Marshals get there, and they see Bostick and Ellis

run into the woods.

A trooper dives into the woods after them,

but Bostick and Ellis split up.

As the search closes in on the fugitives,

Lou and Pete visit their fellow injured officers

at the 7-1.

So now you get to the hospital.

Yep.

And what happens at the hospital?

30 cops were just standing vigil with the family.

At this point, Herman's still in the hospital

being treated for his injuries,

and the doctor pretty much tells us that Russel's,

you know, on life support.

He suffered a critical wound.

They said the bullet went through his mouth,

right to the back of his head,

and hit the top of his spine--

and that they're going to do everything

they can to try to save him.

We also meet Mr. and Mrs. Timoshenko

for the first time.

Russel was laying in bed.

He's got tubes in his mouth.

He's on life support. He's just not moving.

And...

what do you say?

Like, you know, how do you reassure them of anything?

Russel's 23 years old, young cop.

But he's an immigrant.

They came from Belarus, Russia.

both: Yeah.

You know, he came here as a teenager--

Russel--and just wanted to be a New York City cop,

wanted to give back to his adopted homeland.

- Yeah, absolutely. - Yeah.

Absolutely.

There's an only child, so...

They knew we were on a mission to find

the people that shot their son.

And Pete--we asked Tatiana Timoshenko

for Russel's handcuffs.

Then on July 11th, at 6:00 p.m., a trooper spots

Bostick running in the woods.

You know, he resists a little bit,

but he's trying to conceal himself.

He weighed about 300 pounds.

And a trooper tackles him.

And Ellis was able to get away that night.

A DEA helicopter scours the Pocono mountain

searching for suspect Robert Ellis.

- So we're flying-- - Media's there.

We're flying up there-- lights and sirens.

Yeah, lights and sirens.

He was driving. - Yeah.

I had my eyes closed the whole time.

I see Bostick getting ready to go out.

I say, excuse me, I got to put these cuffs on this guy.

These are Russel Timoshenko's cuffs.

And then we put the cuffs on Bostick.

I whisper in his ear, I'm now handcuffing you

with the handcuffs of police officer Russel Timoshenko--

the police officer you shot in the face.

May you rot in hell.

At this point, they fly in Scooby

the bloodhound, who was key in Brooklyn

in finding the weapons.

We had information that Ellis may have had a knife.

They set up a tight perimeter.

And we're out there. They had camouflage.

They had their assault rifles.

They pretty much had Rudy lock down the woods.

They release Scooby where they think Ellis is hiding,

and he flushes Ellis out.

So, at about 8:00 in the morning, on July 12th,

we get a phone call saying that they had just located Ellis.

The last perp was found in the woods,

and he was being brought

into the Pennsylvania State Police barracks.

We believe Lee Woods drove the car,

Dexter Bostick shot Russel Timoshenko,

and Robert Ellis shot Herman Yan.

So now they're clear to bring back to New York.

I'm standing at the front door of the 7-1,

and you hear the sirens.

And here it comes.

There's a caravan-- marked cars, unmarked cars,

vans, emergency service.

Next thing I know, every single police officer

from the 7-1 is lined up on the sidewalk.

I mean, that's about 300 cops.

Yep.

And it was a great feeling of satisfaction

to bring them into the precinct.

They had to walk past every cop.

- Every single one, yeah. - Yep.

A lot of tears and stuff, but it's a lot of hard stares

at these guys. - Yeah.

Cops were very, you know, pissed off

but happy we got them.

The next day, we went to the hospital, to Russel's parents.

There was still hope that Russel would survive.

And then Russel dies.

We got to say goodbye to Russel.

There had to be 200 cops in the hallway waiting.

Yeah.

And they all filed past his bed.

Some stopped, some cried.

Commissioner Kelly-- he comes over to us.

He goes, "You got somewhere to be."

"On our way, boss."

And what he meant was, is that we

needed to go to the DA's office and now up the charges--

- Yeah. - To first-degree murder.

For all three.

And I think about all of the funerals I went to.

Russel's funeral was-- - It was incredible.

probably the largest one I had been at,

you know, at that point.

It was, like, 30,000 cops.

You couldn't move on Flatbush Avenue.

It was packed.

Just a line of patches, shoulder to shoulder

for over a mile.

If you shoot us, we're coming to get you.

- Yeah. - We're coming to get you.