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In-Laws Testify In Attack Conspiracy Trial

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 5, 2008

Updated: 11/05/2008 05:35 pm

TAMPA - Galina Komissarchuk said she and her husband had been arguing with their daughter and son-in-law, when her daughter unexpectedly showed up at her parents' Sarasota house late at night.

It was around 11 p.m., and her daughter, Amelia Shevgart, usually went to sleep much earlier. Shevgart had a peace offering, Komissarchuk said – she and her husband were going to host a party to celebrate her parents' arriving in Sarasota from their Brooklyn home.

Their feud about money was set aside, and Galina and Gregori Komissarchuk went to the home of Amelia and Alex Shevgart to have a good time, Galina Komissarchuk said.

The happiness was short-lived. When the Komissarchucks returned home, an assailant slipped into their garage as the door was closing. Before Galina could even remove her seatbelt, she was attacked.

"He rushed toward me, hitting me with a hammer in his hand," Galina Komissarchuk, 65, an immigrant from the Ukraine, said through a Russian interpreter.

Her son-in-law, Alex Shevgart, is standing trial, accused of orchestrating three attacks on his in-laws because they stopped giving him money after giving the couple hundreds of thousands of dollars for a string of failed businesses and to help them buy a home.

Galina Komissarchuk and her husband suffered fractured skulls in the attack in their garage.

The next day, her daughter and son-in-law picked her up at the hospital to take her to their Bradenton home while her husband remained hospitalized.

When they picked her up, she said, they laughed at her bruises.

On cross-examination by Alex Shevgert's attorney, Stephen Stanley, Galina Komissarchuk agreed that the Shevgerts had laughed after she made a joke about looking like a clown with all the bruises.

"They laughed at me with big pleasure seeing me beaten up," she said.

"You were laughing, too," Stanley said. "Weren't you?"

"I had to laugh," she said.

Three or four days after she left the hospital, she said, the couple again started demanding money. This time they wanted $1 million to open a restaurant that served liquor. Galina Komissarchuk said she refused.

There were ugly arguments, including one in which Alex Shevgart moved toward the Komissarchuks like he was going to attack them, but backed down. The couple told the Komissarchuks they would give them the money if they loved their grandchildren.

Galina Komissarchuk said her husband eventually convinced her that they should go back to New York and look into selling their shoe business so they could move to Sarasota and help with the restaurant.

They went back to Brooklyn on Feb. 1, 2007, and her daughter started calling constantly demanding to know when they would be back, saying they had to buy the business now, Galina Komissarchuk said.

Then, Amelia Shevgart proposed that her parents give them $65,000 to purchase a route where they could sell hot dogs to construction workers, Galina Komissarchuk said. She and her husband thought that was a bad idea.

Her daughter called angry. "She was yelling that, 'You don't want to do it for $1 million. You don't want to do it for $65,000.' " She called her parents liars.

On April 30, 2007, Galina Komissarchuk was attacked on her front steps in Brooklyn by the same hammer-wielding attacker.

Grigori Komissarchuk, 70, told jurors he loves his daughter and doesn't want to testify in court, but feels he has no choice.

"My heart is crying because I have a very big feeling," he said. "I know Alex was the organizer in the things. … I no want it, but I must because my life is in a very, very big scariness. We cannot live. … In our home, we have a lot of gates and cameras. ... Our life completely changed. We cannot sleep. We cannot even smile. We have a lot of pain in our heart. We take a lot of medicine. My wife wakes up screaming."

Also testifying were two men from the Sarasota Russian immigrant community who said Alex Shevgart approached them three years ago about getting people who owed him money to pay.

The two men, Sergi Smirnov and Alexander Leyvi, said Shevgert suggested they use force, if necessary.

Smirnov testified that Shevgert said the people were elderly people in New York.

Three men have pleaded guilty in this case. One of the defendants, Larik Cholak, has said Shevgart told him the Komissarchuks owed him money and he wanted them to be attacked.

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