SUE TOP TROOPER WHO KILLED MOM

A decorated state trooper has been socked with a $44 million federal
lawsuit by the family of a young Brooklyn mother he accidentally shot
and killed.

Trooper Samuel Mercado fatally shot Charmene Pickering, 27, in July
2001 during a car stop near Brooklyn College. Pickering, who had a
1-year-old son, died three days later without regaining
consciousness.

Shortly after the incident, state police officials acknowledged that
Mercado's 9-mm. handgun apparently had discharged by accident.

"I want justice," said the victim's grandmother Mary Pickering, 72,
who has legal custody of her great-grandson, Yarvion. "She was an
innocent girl who didn't do anything and she was just shot dead."

She said Charmene's little boy "looks at her picture on the wall and
wants to take it down and kiss her."

The Brooklyn district attorney's office declined to file criminal
charges against Mercado, who was named New York State Trooper of the
Year in 1994 and was working as a senior investigator on a drug task
force at the time of the shooting.

"We're not saying he [Mercado] intentionally set out that day to hurt
her," said lawyer James Ross who is representing Pickering's estate.
"But the degree of his carelessness is shocking."

"What troubles me is this doesn't happen in white neighborhoods,"
fumed co-counsel William Thompson, a retired judge.

A task force of troopers, federal agents and cops from upstate
Schenectady were executing a search warrant at the Flatbush home of
Charmene Pickering's mother, Cheryl, who was tied to a heroin ring.

They stopped a car driven by suspected drug dealer Carlos Alfonso
Rodas, who was giving Charmene Pickering a ride to pick up her son at
a day care center.

Mercado was trying to remove Rodas' seatbelt when Rodas' arm allegedly
bumped the trooper's drawn weapon causing it to fire a single round
that struck Charmene Pickering in the left side of the neck.

Mary Pickering, a retired Kings County Hospital operating room
technician, said no one from the state police has ever apologized or
even furnished an explanation.

A spokeswoman for state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer declined to
comment yesterday.