A brave 11-year-old girl took the witness stand yesterday to finger the man charged with choking the life out of her mother – her own father.
“I saw him, my father, hit her,” said the child, whose name is being withheld by The Post.
The girl, speaking in a composed voice, told the Brooklyn Supreme Court jury she remembered seeing “his hands around her neck.”
The father, Teofilo Diaz, is accused of strangling his wife, Felipa Santana, in their Brooklyn apartment in June 2003 in front of the horrified girl, who was 6 at the time, and her 2-year-old brother.
After the crime, Diaz allegedly took the kids to relatives and tried to buy his little daughter’s silence – offering her $10 to lie about what happened.
Prosecutors charge that Diaz, 51 – who has already served time in prison for assaulting Santana and was living apart from her – went to the woman’s Bushwick apartment, where he beat her and strangled her with a bandanna.
As she walked into the courtroom, the girl covered the right side of her face so she would not have to look at her father.
The only time she actually looked at Diaz was to stand up and identify him.
The child testified that after she was awakened by her mom’s screams, she walked out to see what the commotion was.
“I kept asking, ‘Why is he hitting her? Why is he hitting her?’ And he hit me across the face,” she said.
Outside of court, the courageous girl said it felt good to tell what happened – but admitted, “I was scared.”