Echoes of the final “Guilty” were still in the air when the tears, grief — and anger — erupted.
Wails of anguish quickly spread through the sixth-floor hallway among the friends and family of the three cops convicted in the Abner Louima conspiracy case.
Convicted cop Thomas Wiese was hugging his wife and burying his face in her shoulder when his mother suddenly sank to the floor in a heap of tears and grief.
He sprinted to his mother’s side and held her tightly.
“You told the truth, you told the truth!” she wept.
“It’s okay,” Wiese repeated over and over.
“How can they get away with this?” cried a shock-stricken Thomas Bruder, the first of the three cops to be found guilty on the jury’s alphabetized verdict sheet. He marched up and down the hall, fighting back tears. “I am better than this!”
“Stay strong,” someone offered to Bruder.
“I’ll be fine,” said Bruder, whose girlfriend stood by, tears streaming down her face. “Nobody’s stronger than me. I’m stronger than anyone in this building.”
“It ain’t over,” Chuck Schwarz’ lawyer, Ronald Fischetti, embracing the convicted cop’s wife, Andra — who remained stoic as her husband was convicted a second time.
As the verdict was read, Schwarz looked searchingly at his lawyers and asked, “What happened? What happened?”
Simmering with anger, Schwarz glared at prosecutors and said, “They’re f—— liars.”
Andra Schwarz tried to rush to her husband’s side to comfort him, but federal marshals held her back.
“This is a joke,” she said later. “I can’t believe 12 people bought the government’s theory on this.”
Marshals quickly escorted Schwarz — already in custody for his conviction last year for restraining Louima during the assault — to a holding area outside the courtroom.
But the ex-cop could be heard shouting, “Two f—— times getting convicted! I didn’t do it!” as Fischetti tried to console him.
Prosecutors, who were reviled by the cops’ supporters after the verdict came down at the last trial, strode quickly from the courtroom.
In the hallway, cops and police union officials who came to support their colleagues gathered in clumps, wiping away tears and standing silent as the weight of what had happened enveloped them.
Schwarz’ mom, Estelle Ohnmeis, said the jurors should have believed confessed sex-torturer Justin Volpe, who testified during the trial that Schwarz played no role in the assault.
Volpe “relived that whole night for them,” she said.
Bruder and Wiese strode out of the courthouse and into waiting cars under a brilliant sun as the media swarmed around them.
Wiese, his eyes red and his head held high, said nothing.
Bruder, before disappearing into his car, said only, “I told the truth.”