John Nicosia was inside the Emergency Medical Service station in Astoria, Queens, where he worked when a frantic man ran up to report a stabbing.
Mr. Nicosia, an emergency medical technician,rushed to the corner of 41st Street and 20th Avenue, where a figure lay on the sidewalk. Mr. Nicosia immediately recognized Alison Russo, a lieutenant whom he had seen inside the station just minutes earlier.
“She wasn’t breathing on her own, no pulse,” Mr. Nicosia testified, adding: “I immediately started doing what I was trained to do.”
But the CPR that Mr. Nicosia performed that afternoon in September 2022 could not preserve his colleague’s life, and on Monday jurors in State Supreme Court in Queens found Peter Zisopoulos guilty of murdering her.
Prosecutors presented a wealth of evidence tying Mr. Zisopoulos to the murder — crucially including video of the killing in progress. But Justice Ushir Pandit-Durant stopped the defense from introducing evidence that Mr. Zisopoulos, whose mother told authorities he took medication for schizophrenia, was mentally ill. The judge said that defense lawyers had not filed a notice that would have let prosecutors prepare a rebuttal.
During a summation, one of Mr. Zisopoulos’s lawyers suggested to jurors that his client was not “astute” or “aware” and lacked the ability to form the intent to kill, an element of the murder charge he faced.
“There’s no rhyme or reason to what happened,” the lawyer, Jonathan Latimer, said. “Just a wild, random, vicious situation for which there is no explanation.”
A prosecutor, Jonathan Selkowe, countered that Mr. Zisopoulos’s actions proved his intent.
“He took a knife and stabbed Alison repeatedly,” Mr. Selkowe said. “A conscious, purposeful, intentional act to kill.”
Jurors heard testimony from two people who witnessed the stabbing, the man who ran to the E.M.S. Station, Station 49 and a police detective who said Mr. Zisopoulos had a knife when he was taken into custody.
Prosecutors also introduced video from cameras worn by police officers and from businesses near the site of the stabbing. Particularly chilling images captured by a camera at one establishment showed Mr. Zisopoulos charging at Captain Russo, who was promoted posthumously, knocking her to the pavement then stabbing her 20 times as she lay on her back.
Nine of those blows penetrated or perforated her heart, according to testimony by Kristin Hord, of the Office of Chief Medical Examiner. Three more struck her lungs.
After the verdict, Captain Russo’s brother, Craig Fuoco, was joined in a courthouse hallway by her daughter, Danielle Fuoco, and a crowd of paramedics and E.M.T.’s who had attended the trial.
“This brings closure,” he said, adding: “We’re ready to start healing and keep Alison’s memory alive.”
“We are very proud of the jury’s verdict,” the Queens district attorney, Melinda Katz, said minutes later. “Justice was done today.”
Mr. Zisopoulos testified in his own defense. In a flat voice, he insisted that he had been asleep in his apartment when the police came to arrest him. He denied repeatedly that he was the attacker shown in video segments.
“No similarities between you and that person, is that your testimony?” Mr. Selkowe asked Mr. Zisopoulos while cross-examining him.
“That’s correct,” Mr. Zisopoulos replied.
Captain Russo, who was 61 when she died, had served for nearly 25 years with the Emergency Medical Service. She sped to ground zero in 2001 after the World Trade Center was destroyed and worked through the height of the pandemic.
Inside Station 49 she was seen as an experienced and sympathetic veteran, described by some as “the mother of the station.” A Fire Department ambulance transported Captain Russo’s body to her funeral on Long Island.
Neighbors in Astoria knew Mr. Zisopoulos as a loner, who often walked through the neighborhood but kept to himself.
Two doctors who examined him in April said he was unfit to stand trial, describing him as delusional and psychotic with an impaired ability to evaluate his options. He told his lawyers not to pursue an insanity defense and was said by one doctor to believe that the evidence against him had been faked.
During a hearing in early May, Mr. Latimer told Justice Pandit-Durant that his client refused to look at police reports, watch video evidence or participate in his defense.
Noting that one of the doctors who had called Mr. Zisopoulos unfit had also said his thinking was “organized and coherent,” the judge declared him competent to stand trial.
“He has rational and factual understanding of the proceeding against him,” she said.
Among those who recognized Mr. Zisopoulos from his walks in Astoria was Courtney Bryson, who testified that she had seen him “a few hundred times” but had never spoken with him.
On the day of Captain Russo’s death, Ms. Bryson testified, she was outside her home on 20th Avenue when she “heard a scream.” When she looked toward the corner, she said, she saw the attack.
Another witness, James Orsaris, testified that he witnessed the stabbing, too, and that Mr. Zisopoulos chased him, brandishing the knife. Janki Oomraw, an auto mechanic with a shop on 20th Avenue, testified that he followed Mr. Zisopoulos to the building where he lived. Along the way, he said, he passed Captain Russo lying on the sidewalk and told her help was on the way.
Video from one camera showed Mr. Oomraw running to Station 49. It then showed Mr. Nicosia rushing to the corner with a tall red backpack, followed closely by an ambulance. A voice could be heard yelling “Oh, my God” and “Russo.”
A police detective testified that when officers had come to arrest Mr. Zisopoulos at his apartment, they removed the peephole to see what was happening as they tried to extricate him. When he reached up to cover the opening, his hand was covered in blood.
On the stand, Mr. Zisopoulos said that the officers had wounded him by poking a knife through the opening. “SWAT stabbed my hand,” he said.
Police body camera videos introduced as evidence showed members of the Emergency Services Unit wearing helmets and carrying shields as they coaxed Mr. Zisopoulos into surrendering.
The detective, Kevin Costello, was shown removing a knife with a serrated blade and a wooden handle from Mr. Zisopoulos’s right pocket.
A hush fell over the courtroom on the trial’s second day when prosecutors played video from a bar at the corner where Captain Russo was attacked, the first images to clearly depict the attack.
The video showed Mr. Zisopoulos abruptly running at her from behind, then kneeling over her body on the sidewalk, plunging his knife into her chest again and again.
Mr. Zisopoulos, seemingly impassive, stared at a screen directly in front of him that displayed that footage as it was shown to jurors. After the footage concluded the screen went dark, but Mr. Zisopoulos continued gazing straight ahead.
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