Wife of SUV driver testifies at trial in West Side biker melee

NEW YORK (WABC) -- The wife of an SUV driver who was beaten by angry motorcyclists testified at the trial of undercover detective Wojciech Braszczok and co-defendant Robert Sims on Tuesday.

They are charged with assault and other crimes following a motorcycle rally that devolved into pandemonium and became a highway horror story to millions who saw a helmet-camera video posted online.

In video first obtained by Eyewitness News, you can see a glimpse of Roslyn Ng wearing dark sunglass in the backseat of a black Range Rover.

She testified in court on Tuesday. It's where she retreated to a backseat filled with shattered glass to check on her then two-year-old daughter after escaping the hands of a few angry bikers back in September 2013.

"They somehow get my door open and there were like two or three guys. And they were yanking me out. They couldn't drag me out of the car because I still had my seatbelt on," she said. "I'm screaming we have a baby! We have a baby! Stop! Stop!"

When the coast was clear and she eventually got out of the SUV, she tried to shield her daughter from seeing her daddy.

"I was trying to keep my daughter's face away from looking at Alex. I just didn't want to scare her," Ng explained.

Prosecutors say this 911 call was placed by Alexian Lien while he was trying to evade bikers on the West Side Highway, but it bounced over to a New Jersey 911 call center.

When Ng snapped a picture of a biker who had smashed out their left driver's side mirror, she believes that moment turned a battle for the roadway into an all-out war

"There was an altercation that the other bikers saw," she explained. "Three guys specifically squeezed themselves between us and the car in front of us. They were screaming at us and gesturing at us."

She testified they made throat slitting gestures and they were yelling, and then surrounded their SUV after her husband tapped the bumper of one of the bikers. That's when she told him to gun it and get out of there.

"He honked, and turned the wheel to the right, and then took off. I know he hit something because the car when high and came back down, I thought we went over a bike," she testified.

On Monday, Alexian Lien told a judge that he felt in "complete fear. For my life, for my wife's, for my daughter's."

Braszczok, who was off duty when he participated in the rally gone wrong, was accused by Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass of failing to act as a police officer. Braszczok reached into a broken window on the SUV, then stood by and eventually drove off as others pulled Lien from the car and attacked him, prosecutors said.

"Not only did he fail to protect and serve, he cast his lot in with the assailants," Steinglass said.

Defense attorney John Arlia said Braszczok was acting as a cop afraid of blowing his deep cover. He denied Braszczok took part in any assault. Braszczok should have told his colleagues that he'd seen the assault, but he was afraid of losing his job, Arlia said.

"But that does not make him a criminal," he said.

Sims' lawyer Luther Williams didn't give an opening statement, but has said his client was working with police and helped save the life of the biker struck by Lien.

The defendants decided to have a judge, not a jury, determine the outcome. Eleven men were indicted after the melee; the others have pleaded guilty to charges including assault and riot and face sentences of probation to two years in prison. Some of the road encounters were caught on video and posted online.

Lien was not charged. The biker Lien hit, Edwin Mieses, was paralyzed.