Bloodhounds Help Nab Third Shooting Suspect

Surrounded by his law enforcement pursuers and their bloodhounds, the last at-large suspect in the shooting of two police officers on Monday likely spent his final hours of freedom Wednesday night alone in a Pennsylvania forest.

Robert Ellis, whom investigators believe shot five times at a New York City police officer in Brooklyn, was apprehended by police on the side of a highway in the Pocono region of Pennsylvania at about 8 a.m. yesterday, officials said.

"It appeared that he hunkered down for the night, with no attempt to escape," Captain James Murtin of the Pennsylvania State Police said.

The arrest capped a three-day dragnet during which hundreds of detectives, officers, and federal agents hunted for the three career criminals that investigators believe incited a gunfight with two police officers after getting pulled over in a stolen sport-utility vehicle at 2:30 a.m. in the Prospect Lefferts Gardens section of Brooklyn.

The bloodshed left Officer Russel Timoshenko, 23, paralyzed from the neck down and unable to breathe on his own. His partner, Officer Herman Yan, sustained a lesser gunshot wound during the incident.

Ellis was apprehended on Interstate 80 near Pocono Township, Pa., about a half mile from the spot where police Wednesday night tackled and arrested Dexter Bostic, whom investigators believe shot Officer Timoshenko twice in the face.

The third suspect, Lee Woods, was arrested on Monday in Queens and arraigned on Wednesday in Brooklyn Criminal Court on attempted murder charges.

After getting flushed out of thick brush by a bloodhound, Ellis was spotted running along the side of the highway by an officer in the U.S. Marshals service, and moments later was arrested, Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a press conference yesterday in front of King's County Hospital, where Officer Timoshenko is in grave condition.

Both suspects were held at a Pennsylvania State Police barracks in Stillwater, Pa., and arraigned yesterday at local courts on fugitive-from-justice charges, officials said.

Ellis yesterday waived his right to fight to have charges brought against him in Pennsylvania, officials said. Bostic did not have the same right because he is on parole for a separate crime, officials said. Both suspects arrived for criminal processing at the 71st Precinct in Brooklyn last night at about 7 p.m., and will likely be arraigned today in Brooklyn Criminal Court, officials said.

The major break in the case came when the man who had driven Bostic and Ellis to Pennsylvania from Queens spoke to police at the urging of his brother, a city police officer, Mr. Kelly said.

Bostic and Ellis's attempted escape began in the Far Rockaway section of Queens hours after the shooting. The suspects crossed the Long Island Sound on a ferry, arriving in Bridgeport, Conn., and continued south to Interstate 80, on which they drove to Pennsylvania, police said.

While it was unclear if the suspects had family connections in the Pocono region, investigators confirmed that it was not the first time Bostic and Ellis had visited the area, Mr. Murtin said.

At Mr. Kelly's press conference yesterday in front of the hospital, he said that the mother and father of an auxiliary police officer who in March was gunned down in Greenwich Village, Yevgeniy Marshalik, had spent the morning comforting Officer Timoshenko's parents. The families are both of Russian heritage, he said. Mr. Kelly also praised the hundreds of detectives who tirelessly worked to bring the three suspects to justice.

"One of the most impressive things you'll ever see in law enforcement is when somebody shoots a New York City cop," a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Eugene O'Donnel, said. "They are at their finest moments when that happens. They're going to get the guy."