Victim speaks out — Florida shooting

County’s first road-rage prosecution said on Tuesday she is “100 percent gut confident” that Trinidadian Vishnu Persad pulled the trigger, even though she only glimpsed the shooter.

“I had gotten side views of this guy and the car,” Mary Beth Wolter said in her first public comments since a hearing began this week on Persad’s request for a new trial, Florida’s Sun- Sentinel newspaper reported yesterday. “I know in my heart and my gut he is the person who did this,” she said outside court.

Persad, 29, is serving 43 years in prison for aggravated battery in what he contends is a case of mistaken identity. His hearing on a retrial is expected to continue

today before a Palm Beach County judge.

A jury convicted Persad in October 2001 after one witness identified him as the shooter. Three others said Persad, an aspiring physician, was studying at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton at the time of the shooting. His defence team contends the original attorney failed to aggressively challenge the lone witness identification or investigate alternate suspects.

The defence also maintains it was a mistake to hold Persad’s trial within weeks of the

September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

At the time, long black hair and a beard framed Persad’s bronze complexion. He is a national of Trinidad and Tobago.

“I don’t understand why this 9-11 issue has anything to do with what’s going on,” Wolter said. “It has nothing to do with the case.”

On March 2, 2000, she was a passenger on then-husband Robert Dziadik’s motorcycle as they headed along Jog Road just south of Southern Boulevard with friends

on two other motorcycles.

The motorcyclists got into an argument with the driver of a Toyota, who shot Wolter in the hip. The bullet left her with a host of medical problems, including being unable to have children, she said. One of her toes was amputated.

The shooter got away.

Persad was identified as a suspect in May 2000 after a private detective the Dziadiks hired got an anonymous tip, according to testimony. The Dziadik’s have since divorced, and Mary Beth restored her maiden name of Wolter.

The private investigator showed the motorcyclists a photo lineup, and only Robert Dziadik out of five people picked Persad, according to court records. Persad was 17

in the seven-year-old photo. He had no beard or long hair at that time. “I have high confidence in my ex-husband,” Wolter said. “[He and the shooter] exchanged words.”

Wolter identified a different man as the shooter from the hospital after she saw him on television, court records show. On Tuesday, she said that was an error caused by medication. The man she identified, Gabriel Celestino Moran of Lake Worth, was sentenced in May 2002 to 11 years in prison after a jury convicted him of attempted murder for using a car to run down a woman walking with a group of people, court records show.