Mentally ill man accused of killing EMS Lt. Alison Russo deemed unfit to stand trial: prosecutors
The unhinged man accused of fatally stabbing FDNY EMS Lt. Alison Russo is too mentally ill to stand trial — and won’t be seeing the inside of a courtroom anytime soon, the Daily News has learned.
For the last several months, assailant Peter Zisopoulos has been cooling his heels in an upstate mental institution after a judge deemed him unfit to participate in his own defense for the murder of Russo on Sept. 29, Queens prosecutors confirmed.
Zisopoulos, 34, won’t be brought back to court until state health officials believe he is well enough to participate in a court proceeding, prosecutors said.
“The case is pending,” a spokesman for Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said Tuesday.
Russo, 61, was on duty near her station in Astoria when Zisopoulos allegedly attacked her, knifing her more than 10 times. She was taken to a nearby hospital, where she died.
The mother and grandmother was a 24-year veteran of the FDNY and expected to retire in a few months, friends said.
After the stabbing, Zisopoulos ran back to his nearby home and surrendered to authorities after a brief standoff with police. During questioning, he admitted to stabbing Russo, according to prosecutors. The confession was caught on a cop’s body-worn camera, Assistant District Attorney Jonathan Selkowe said.
The murder suspect had no prior arrests, but had been hospitalized in 2018 when cops found him cursing at Asians in the street, authorities said. Relatives have told police that Zisopoulos is schizophrenic.
He pleaded not guilty to murder charges at his arraignment from a bed at Bellevue Hospital, where he was undergoing a psychological exam.
At the time his attorney said that Zisopoulos had “a past psychiatric history” and didn’t “understand the charges against him.”
FDNY Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh posthumously promoted Russo to captain at her funeral in Long Island, where Russo’s family directed their pain and anger at Zisopoulos.
“He left her dying there on the street like a rag doll that was just discarded,” Russo’s father Frank Fuoco said to a hushed crowd at the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts in Brookville, L.I. “That man murdered our daughter, and she would have been the first one to come to his aid if he ever needed help.”
Zisopoulos was committed to a mental institution on Dec. 16 after an evaluation proved he was unable to participate in his defense.
Russo’s colleagues at the Uniformed EMS Officer’s Union were outraged that Zisopoulos had sidestepped a trial, at least for the time being.
“The Queens District Attorney failed to bring justice for Cpt. Alison Russo,” EMS Officers Union President Vincent Variale told the Daily News. “This murderer should be locked up for the rest of his life in prison for such a horrific crime.
“This is disrespectful to EMS, first responders and most of all the Russo family,” Variale said about Zisopoulos’ commitment to an institution.
The psychiatric commitment realized fears among Russo’s colleagues that Zisopoulos would be a repeat of the prosecution of Jose Gonzalez, the man accused of killing EMT Yadira Arroyo in 2017. Questions about Gonzalez’s mental state dragged on for five years until he was deemed unfit to stand trial and put into a psychiatric hospital.
In September, after four months in the hospital, doctors said Gonzalez was well enough to stand trial. He was found guilty of killing Arroyo in March and sentenced to life without parole.
Zisopoulos’ attorney Wilson Antonio Lafaurie said that two separate psychiatrists confirmed that his client is schizophrenic and didn’t understand the charges against him. His documented psychiatric history goes back to when he was 21 and first began suffering symptoms.
After a judge agreed that he was not mentally fit to stand trial, Zisopulos was basically warehoused in Bellevue — not getting the treatment he needed to bring him back to a state where he could go to court — for three more months before being transferred upstate.
“It’s a tragedy what happened to Lt. Russo,” Lafaurie said. “In this case there is no good outcome for anyone, on either side.”
Russo was honored on Wednesday at the FDNY’s 2023 Medal Day ceremony, in which the department’s new “Captain Alison Russo North Star Medal” was given to EMS Cpt. Edgar Baez for helping to organize the rapid response to his colleague’s murder.
