Community Corner
Yorktown Cop Testifies in Murder Trial
Mark Rapisarda, the victim's cousin, identified Tina Adovasio's body she was found in a heavily-wooded area in Yorktown. The victim's husband is on trial for her murder.
The estranged husband of Tina Adovasio, whose body was found in a heavily-wooded area near the Taconic State Parkway in Yorktown last year, is undergoing a murder trial.
Former New York City Police Officer Eddy Coello, who was fired from his job in 2000 after another woman had filed a domestic abuse claim, was in court this week. He has been charged with the murder of his estranged wife and dumping her body in Yorktown.
Adovasio, 40, was found dead five days after she went missing on March 11, 2011. One of the police officers working the detail that night was Adovasio's cousin – Yorktown Police Officer Mark Rapisarda. According to police, he identified his cousin when her body was discovered.
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Rapisarda testified in court on Monday, according to a Newsday article. He told jurors he had recognized Adovasio's swollen face and confirmed it was his cousin's body by a tattoo on the woman's ankle.
According to a New York Post article, the Yorktown police officer told jurors:
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"I've seen a lot of dead bodies. But not of someone that I know or someone that I’m related to."
On Monday, jurors also heard emotional testimony from the victim's 18-year-old son Joseph. Pointing at a pixilated surveillance camera footage, which showed Coello leaving Adovasio's apartment building with a duffel bag, Adovasio's son told the jury he believed his mother's body was in that bag, according to reports.
The woman had filed for divorce from Coello, according to the Daily News, set to leave a situation that had her husband arrested three times for domestic violence against her.
Adovasio has family in Mahopac who held a service for the woman at St. John the Evangelist Church in Mahopac last year. More than 100 people, many of whom carried yellow, pink and orange roses, remembered the mother of four who worked as a nurse in the Maternity Department of New Rochelle's Sound Shore Medical Center.
She leaves behind four children – three children from a previous marriage and a daughter with Coello.
According to Newsday, the trial continued Wednesday, when jurors were "expected to hear testimony from a DNA expert."
To read the entire Newsday article, click here.
To read the entire NY Post article, click here.
For Patch's coverage, click here, here and here.
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