Nov 19, 2006 10:02 pm US/Eastern
Couple Forced Off Westchester Road, Then Shot
NEW CASTLE, N.Y. (CBS/AP) ―
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Carlos and Peggy Perez-Olivo were hospitalized after being attacked at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday, the New Castle Police Department said.
CBS
A recently disbarred criminal defense attorney and his wife were shot by a man after their car was forced off a highway, police said.
Carlos and Peggy Perez-Olivo were hospitalized after being attacked at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday, the New Castle Police Department said.
The couple were en route to their Chappaqua home from Manhattan on a desolate part of northbound Route 100 when a car in the inside lane cut in front of their sport utility vehicle, forcing them off the roadway, police said.
The car pulled over after the couple's SUV. A man with a gun got out and entered the SUV through a back door, and Carlos Perez-Olivo fought with him, police said.
"Mr. Olivo attempted to wrestle the gun from him, and there were several shots fired," Detective Sgt. Marc Simmons said Sunday.
Perez-Olivo's wife was shot in the head, and he was wounded, but he was able to drive to the hospital.
The gunman fled, getting back in his car, which the attorney told police may have been carrying two other people, though they never got out.
Police said they had been unable to determine a motive in the incident or identify any suspects. They could not say whether the shooting was connected to Perez-Olivo's work as a high-profile criminal defense attorney or was a random attack.
Perez-Olivo was disbarred in August for misconduct in his representation of four criminal defendants, the state Law Reporting Bureau said.
He previously was accused of incompetence for failing to recall portions of his closing argument in defense of Elio Cruz, a waiter convicted of second-degree murder for fatally shooting his wife's lover last year in a Manhattan subway station.
"There is a lot of other things that honestly I thought of and I can't think of right now," Perez-Olivo told the jury before Cruz was convicted and sentenced to 18 years to life in prison.
During the trial, a juror gave the judge a letter saying she thought Perez-Olivo had given a "weak, shoddy and often perfunctory, unconcerned performance" on Cruz's behalf. The judge replaced the juror and another who apparently had similar feelings about Perez-Olivo with alternates.
Perez-Olivo said when his client was convicted that jurors apparently did not listen to the evidence but instead were swayed by appeals to emotion.
A hospital spokeswoman said Sunday she couldn't release the conditions of Perez-Olivo and his wife or transfer any telephone calls to them. There was no home phone listing for the couple in Chappaqua, the Westchester County hamlet just north of New York City where Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton live.
(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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