9. How Trina Got In
From California to Lebanon, we try and make your experience at Meditrina well rounded. Our wines are rare, and go perfectly with what ever you decide to pair with. From easy to drink to spicy and complex - we have whatever your palate desires!
9. How Trina Got In
She calls it the "blue wall of silence." Each time Katrina Cooke Brownlee called 911 after her correction officer fiancé beat her, she says the police walked away after seeing his shield. As she shares with "48 Hours" and "CBS Saturday Morning" co-host Michelle Miller, she took matters into her own hands and joined the NYPD to change the system from within.
Katrina Brownlee: Maybe it was just a bad day at Rikers Island. Maybe I didn't want to have sex with him. Maybe the baby was crying. Maybe I had on something he didn't like to see me in.
In 1992, Alex Irvin moved Katrina and the two girls from Brooklyn to a small house in Medford, Long Island. But, she says, the abuse continued and only got worse. Finally, after five years of getting beaten black and blue, Katrina said enough.
Katrina Brownlee: I was pregnant, and I said to myself, I'm not bringing another child into this toxic, violent relationship with this man and that I am going to save my money, get some strength from somewhere somehow and get out of this relationship. And that's what I did.
Katrina and her daughters moved to a local motel. But after a month, she ran out of money. Desperate, she called Alex Irvin. Katrina says he was like a different person and even offered to help her get back on her feet.
On January 9, Katrina says she walked straight into a trap. She left her older daughter with a neighbor and went with her younger daughter to Irvin's house. This is what she told us happened next. A warning: you may find it disturbing.
And he was in no hurry, says Katrina. When she could no longer crawl, he put her in the bed and covered her gunshot wounds with Band-Aids. At one point, he carried her to the bathroom, leaving behind a blood-stained blueprint of the attack.
Katrina was rushed into surgery as soon as she got to the hospital after the attack. Multiple operations followed in the days ahead, but doctors were unable to remove six of the bullets that had entered her body, says Keri.
Alex Irvin's mother let Katrina move into her house in Brooklyn, unoccupied at the time. Katrina had around-the-clock care and daily sessions with a speech and physical therapist, but, deeply depressed, she refused to work at her therapy.
There were many stops along the way that could have derailed Katrina Cooke Brownlee's journey out of darkness. Katrina says that getting thrown out of Alex Irvin's mother's house in Brooklyn while still recovering was one of them.
Keri made an impassioned plea to the judge to give the man who shot and tortured Katrina a minimum of 20 years behitnd bars; but the judge didn't heed Keri's pleas. He gave Alex Irvin the lightest sentence possible: five to 15 years.
Keri Herzog: Katrina and I actually talked about why she would join the police department. And one of the things she mentioned, that, you know, the best way to change a system is from the inside out.
A system that Katrina says repeatedly turned its back on her when she'd call 911 after being beaten in the years before she was shot. Katrina wanted to become what she says she needed all those years ago: a good cop.
Katrina Cooke Brownlee had spent a lifetime defying the odds: climbing out of poverty, surviving a near fatal attack, walking after believing she would never walk again. And in the final years of her NYPD career, she would buck the odds once again.
Katrina Brownlee: Yeah. I had to. I had to forgive him so I can get back my control so I can get back my power and so that I can have a peace within myself. There's no peace when you harbor in anger, when you're mad. There's no peace in that. 041b061a72