Two Brighton Beach grannies charged with peddling prescription drugs to neighborhood kids were too ill to appear yesterday at their arraignments, their lawyers said.
Roza Shusterman, 80, who has breast cancer, was admitted to Coney Island Hospital after suffering a heart attack, said her lawyer, Joe Mure Jr.
“She’s a very ill woman,” said Mure, adding Shusterman may even have Alzheimer’s disease.
“She doesn’t remember anything,” he said.
Mure said he’s trying to plea-bargain with the Brooklyn district attorney for the minimum sentence of 4½ to nine years to be served under house arrest.
But yesterday in state Supreme Court, Assistant District Attorney Colleen Babb just smiled at Mure’s suggestion, reminding him that his client had pleaded guilty to a prior drug offense in 1992.
Shusterman was rescheduled to be arraigned in two weeks.
Faina Kodner’s defense attorney, Craig Newman, said his 77-year-old client “couldn’t breathe this morning. She is very ill and in poor health.”
She was not admitted to a hospital.
Kodner is now scheduled to be in court Friday. The Russian grandmothers were busted in May in their Brighton Beach apartments, where they were allegedly trafficking the heroin substitute Hydromorphone tablets, a prescribed painkiller for cancer patients.