NEW YORK - Thousands of miles from the former Soviet land where Russel Timoshenko was born 23 years ago, family and friends of the New York police officer who died in the line of duty saw him for a last time at his wake on Tuesday.
The officer died on Saturday, five days after he was shot in the face while pulling over a stolen vehicle.
Hundreds of mourners lined up at the I.J. Morris funeral home near Timoshenko's 71st Precinct in Brooklyn. The five-hour wake started at 4 p.m. Tuesday and was to be repeated on Wednesday.
The officer's parents, Leonid and Tatyana Timoshenko, sat before their only child's open casket, graced with a folded American flag, a cross and a Russian icon - a sacred image in their Eastern Orthodox Christian faith.
On a pillow by Timoshenko's head lay his New York Police Department hat.
Attorney Terri Kalker, who was Timoshenko's court adversary, representing clients in numerous traffic summons cases, recalled how he was “very nice, very polite.”
“He was eloquent, he had a sense of humor and he was well educated,” Kalker said.
Timoshenko's funeral, planned for Thursday, is to be conducted mostly in an antique form of Russian that is the language of the Eastern Orthodox church to which he was born in Belarus, a former Soviet republic.
He grew up as an immigrant on Staten Island, where his family settled after arriving in the United States when he was 7. He graduated from the borough's Tottenville High School, where he played lacrosse and liked to dance.
But his longtime dream was to become a police officer.
He died as an officer whom Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised as “a hero.”
He was felled only a year and a half after he joined the NYPD.
He and his partner, Herman Yan, had pulled over a stolen sport utility vehicle. When Timoshenko approached the car, the occupants opened fire, spraying his face with bullets and hitting his partner, police said. The partner has survived.
Three men face charges in the shooting.
In death, the immigrant youth returned to his roots, mourned in the faith of his childhood.
In his last hours at the hospital, Timoshenko's neck was graced by a silver crucifix from Russia said to contain the bones of a third-century Eastern Orthodox martyr.
As mourners entered the funeral chapel Tuesday, they were met with a display of photos that included pictures of Timoshenko as a boy in the Soviet Union.
Most knew him as a young man in New York.
While preparing to become a police officer, Timoshenko worked as a waiter at a Manhattan hotel. “He was a good guy - a very, very good guy, very friendly,” said Maureen Cottle, who works in housekeeping at the midtown Novotel.
She visited him at the hospital a day before his death.
“I thought that by some miracle he wasn't going to die,” she said, her voice breaking.
Hundreds of mourners lined up at the I.J. Morris funeral home near Timoshenko's 71st Precinct in Brooklyn. The five-hour wake started at 4 p.m. Tuesday and was to be repeated on Wednesday.
The officer's parents, Leonid and Tatyana Timoshenko, sat before their only child's open casket, graced with a folded American flag, a cross and a Russian icon - a sacred image in their Eastern Orthodox Christian faith.
On a pillow by Timoshenko's head lay his New York Police Department hat.
Attorney Terri Kalker, who was Timoshenko's court adversary, representing clients in numerous traffic summons cases, recalled how he was “very nice, very polite.”
“He was eloquent, he had a sense of humor and he was well educated,” Kalker said.
Timoshenko's funeral, planned for Thursday, is to be conducted mostly in an antique form of Russian that is the language of the Eastern Orthodox church to which he was born in Belarus, a former Soviet republic.
He grew up as an immigrant on Staten Island, where his family settled after arriving in the United States when he was 7. He graduated from the borough's Tottenville High School, where he played lacrosse and liked to dance.
But his longtime dream was to become a police officer.
He died as an officer whom Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised as “a hero.”
He was felled only a year and a half after he joined the NYPD.
He and his partner, Herman Yan, had pulled over a stolen sport utility vehicle. When Timoshenko approached the car, the occupants opened fire, spraying his face with bullets and hitting his partner, police said. The partner has survived.
Three men face charges in the shooting.
In death, the immigrant youth returned to his roots, mourned in the faith of his childhood.
In his last hours at the hospital, Timoshenko's neck was graced by a silver crucifix from Russia said to contain the bones of a third-century Eastern Orthodox martyr.
As mourners entered the funeral chapel Tuesday, they were met with a display of photos that included pictures of Timoshenko as a boy in the Soviet Union.
Most knew him as a young man in New York.
While preparing to become a police officer, Timoshenko worked as a waiter at a Manhattan hotel. “He was a good guy - a very, very good guy, very friendly,” said Maureen Cottle, who works in housekeeping at the midtown Novotel.
She visited him at the hospital a day before his death.
“I thought that by some miracle he wasn't going to die,” she said, her voice breaking.
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