Brinkerhoff

NEW YORK – The wife of slain New York State Trooper David Brinkerhoff, who was killed in a shootout in Margaretville in April 2007, has filed a lawsuit against St. Lawrence County and its probation department for $100 million contending had Travis Trim, 23,  been incarcerated as he should have been, her husband would be alive today.

Brinkerhoff, who was 29 at the time of his death and who lived in Coxsackie, was a member of the State Police Mobile Response Team. Police from a number of agencies had been tracking Trim, after he fled upstate and shot another trooper in the hand the day before.

Police had cornered Trim in a farmhouse in Margaretville when there was an exchange of gunfire. Brinkerhoff is said to have shot and killed Trim, but as he stood up to fire, another trooper behind him, left off a round, striking Brinkerhoff in the back of the neck, killing him.

Moshe Horn is one of the lawyers representing Mrs. Brinkerhoff.

“Through our investigation we learned that, in fact, Mr. Travis Trim had been on probation – had violated probation several times – and that, in fact, when the probation department finally issued a warrant for his being picked up and incarcerated, they in fact shredding this warrant violating their own protocols,” he said. “They never let anyone know; law enforcement never knew and for four months Travis Trim was on the street and no one ever knew to pick him up.”

“We allege that Travis Trim was free to commit the crimes solely because of the negligence and numerous failures of the St. Lawrence County Probation Department,” said New York lawyer Christopher Seeger of the law firm of Seeger Weiss, who is suing on behalf of Brinkerhoff’s widow, Barbara, and their daughter, Isabella, who is now 18-months-old and suffers from Down Syndrome.