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Slain cop Jonathan Diller’s brother in blue broke down in a Queens courtroom Thursday as he delivered heart-wrenching testimony against the career criminal who allegedly gunned down the NYPD hero right before his eyes.
“I saw Diller laying on the floor … He’s not responding,” Officer Veckash Khedna testified, tears streaming down his face the moment he took the witness stand at accused cop killer Guy Rivera’s murder trial.
“I’m thinking he’s dead. I started crying. One of my best friends is dead,” he said.
Khedna recounted for jurors the March 2024, traffic stop in Far Rockaway that turned senselessly tragic when Rivera was allegedly caught red-handed with an illegal gun in his pocket, according to prosecutors.
“He was gripping the gun. It was close to his waist area. He was looking directly at Diller,” Khedna recalled.
“At that moment I heard the guns fired. Shot went off. I heard Diller start screaming. He was in a lot of pain. He dropped to his knees. He started crawling toward the back of the car,” the cop testified.
Khedna told the court through tears that he made a split-second decision to shoot Rivera as Diller lay mortally wounded just steps away and Rivera pointed a gun at the chest of a police sergeant, Sasha Rosen.
“[Rivera] had the gun in his right hand, pointing it into Sergeant Rosen’s chest,” Khedna said. “I discharged my weapon and he continued to get out of the car… I had my gun up and took a second shot at the defendant’s arm and wasn’t sure I hit him but he immediately started falling.”
The emotional testimony came as Diller’s widow, Stephanie Diller, sat in a sea of cops in Queens Supreme Court, but left several times in tears as haunting images of her 31-year-old husband in his last moments were shown to the jury.
In heartbreaking testimony earlier in the trial, the grieving woman recalled how the couple had taken their toddler son to the park on March 25, 2024 on what was supposed to be his day off — until he got called into work, WCBS New York reported.
He called during his meal break, in what would be the last time they spoke.
“He said, ‘I love you,'” she recalled. “‘I’ll see you soon.'”
Later that night, Diller, Rosen and Khedna were among a group of officers investigating a Kia Soul that was suspiciously parked at a bus stop, when things went horribly wrong.
Khedna, who joined the force in 2019 and was later promoted to detective, testified that he was standing outside the car when Rosen ordered Rivera to get out — and had a “clear view” when the suspect suddenly shoved his hand in his pocket.
“I immediately pointed and started yelling, ‘Bro, don’t put your hand in your pocket! Don’t put your hand in your pocket!'” he told the jury. “At that at this point his hand is coming out of his pocket and I see the gun in his hand. He pushed Sergeant Rosen’s hand away.”
That’s when Rivera allegedly pulled the trigger even as he wrestled with Rosen, with Khedna returning fire and finally downing the maniac — and then he turned to his fallen friend.
“They put me in the ambulance and took me to the hospital,” he said. “My blood pressure hit the roof, way too high and I was having trouble breathing.
“At the hospital I saw him pass, I saw him in the bed. I said my final goodbye.”
After he was done testifying, Khedna’s wife wiped the tears from his face in a tender moment outside the courtroom.
Rivera is on trial in Queens Supreme Court on a first-degree murder charge and faces life in prison without chance of parole if he is found guilty.
Police bodycam footage played at the trial captured Diller’s last moments.
“I’m shot!” Diller is heard screaming.
“Bro, bro, where are you hit?” Rosen is heard responding. “Where you hit?”
Rosen, who also broke down on the witness stand when he testified earlier at trial, could be seen in a panic as cops on the scene realized that Diller was seriously wounded and rushed him to the hospital — to no avail.
Rivera’s lawyer, Jamal Johnson, tried to grill Khedna on bodycam footage that appeared to show his client smiling after Diller was shot — with the cop finally snapping.
“Yes, he is smiling!” he said. “He was smiling multiple times. At this point he was looking at Diller lying on the ground and he was smiling. When I picked him up he was looking at Diller, smiling.
“He was smirking,” the cop said. “He was smiling after he shot a cop.”
Rivera and fellow defendant Lindy Jones, who was behind the wheel of the Kia and was charged with illegal gun possession, were both arrested at the scene on Mott Avenue.
Rivera, 35, had 21 prior arrests before the shooting.
Jones already had at least 14 busts on his rap sheet, including for robbery, assault, and attempted murder stemming from a 2001 shooting case.
Police believe the pair was staking out a local business for an armed robbery before the shooting.
Forensics experts said Rivera’s DNA was found on two weapons at the scene — the .380-caliber handgun that killed Diller and a 9 mm that had been stashed in the glove compartment of the Kia.
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