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Woman Allegedly Raped by Police Was "Stumbling" Drunk on Night of Attack, Friend Testifies

By DNAinfo Staff on April 5, 2011 9:31pm

Left to right: Police officers Kenneth Moreno, 43, and Franklin Mata, 28, are on trial for an alleged  rape of an East Village woman in 2008.
Left to right: Police officers Kenneth Moreno, 43, and Franklin Mata, 28, are on trial for an alleged rape of an East Village woman in 2008.
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DNAinfo/John Marshall Mantel

By Shayna Jacobs

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — An East Village woman allegedly raped by two NYPD officers after she was too drunk to get home from her cab got "stumbling" drunk at a going-away party thrown in her honor, according to witnesses who testified Tuesday.

"She just couldn't get her bearings. She was stumbling, you know, just not stable on her feet," said Laure Simi, one of the victim's friends who attended the party in Brooklyn with the victim on Dec. 7 2008, hours before the alleged attack.

"She kept saying she needed to go home. She was intoxicated...leaning her head head back on the wall. She just wanted to go home she was done for the night," said Simi, a fashion designer who worked with the purported victim.

Simi testified that at the end of the evening she had to help the woman get into a cab outside the bar because she was drunk. The woman was planning to move to California for a new job, friends said.

The story was in keeping with the 911 call from the cabbie who got the victim to her East Village apartment but had to summon police to get the drunk woman out of his car after she vomited inside and was unable to get out alone.

"I have somebody in my cab that is so drunk that I need assistance," cabbie Kofi Owusu said in the call to 911 played in Manhattan Supreme Court Tuesday. Taxi and Limousine Commission rules prohibit drivers from touching passengers.

Prosecutors called the friends and the cabdriver in their case against police officers Kenneth Moreno, 43, and Franklin Mata, 28, who they charge took the woman upstairs and raped her during one of their four visits to her apartment that night. Moreno is accused of taking advantage of her while Mata allegedly stood guard at the apartment.

Defense lawyers have argued the woman was blackout drunk and unable to remember significant parts of the night, including what defense lawyer Joseph Tacopina dubbed her "flirting" with the officers on trial for her alleged rape.

Tacopina cited emails between Simi and the alleged victim that he said show the woman couldn't remember what happened that night. Those emails have not yet been admitted into evidence at the officers' trial, which opened Monday in Manhattan Supreme Court.

But a second friend of the victim's who testified Tuesday disputed the accounts of the night, saying the victim was only "buzzed," but didn't seem drunk to the point of losing control.

Kendra Taylor testified Tuesday that their friend was having fun at a party only hours before her alleged rape, but that as the evening wore on, she quickly realized she would be sick and wanted to go home.

Video showing the alleged victim exiting the cab with the officers' help is expected to be shown at trial later this week.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Gregory Carro ordered the video — and all the evidence at trial — sealed from public view on Tuesday afternoon.

The officers, who were suspended from patrol, face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

Testimony in the trial is suspended each Wednesday, and is expected to resume on Thursday.