A TV production assistant who was shot in the chest while protecting her cousin outside a Brooklyn bodega took the stand Monday to testify about the terrifying night — and recalled how she had first given the shooter a hug to try to defuse his anger.
“I thought, ‘We’re all from Brooklyn. Let’s hug it out, then everything will be OK,” testified Lourdes Guillen, 27, who worked as a production assistant for “The View” when she was shot in April 2012 in Bushwick.
The accused gunman, Kenneth Brown — on trial for attempted murder — had drunkenly yelled at a bodega worker for being too slow and tried picking a fight with Guillen’s cousin Juan Medina when she intervened with the hug, she recalled in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
Brown, 30, then stormed off — before returning and shooting Medina, she said.
Guillen said she implored Brown to spare the wounded Medina, 26.
“I told him, ‘Stop, stop! You don’t have to do this,’ ” Guillen recalled.
With tears in her eyes, she recounted Brown’s chilling response.
“I don’t give a f- -k. I’ll shoot you, too, b- - -h,” he said, according to Guillen.
“That’s when he shot me, and I fell to the ground,” she said
Guillen, who has moved out of the city and now works for cable network HLN in Atlanta, stood to point to the spot underneath her right breast where the bullet slammed into her.
“I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stand. I just had to lie on the pavement,” she said, as a court officer brought her a handful of tissues.
Defense attorney Mark Pollard said Brown was too drunk to have had the mental state necessary to be convicted of attempted murder.
Shortly after the shooting, Guillen was applauded on “The View” for her bravery.
Hosts Barbara Walters and Elizabeth Hasselbeck gave a “get well soon” shout-out to Guillen as she recovered in Bellevue Hospital in 2012.
“She said, ‘I had to defend my family. I would do it again,’ ” Walters marveled on air.
“She’s a true hero,” Hasselbeck said.
The trial continues Tuesday.