Russel Timoshenko (August 18, 1983 – July 14, 2007) was a 23-year-old New York Police Department (NYPD) police officer who was shot on July 9, 2007, and died five days later, after pulling over a stolen BMW automobile in New York City's Crown Heights, Brooklyn, neighborhood. After a four-day manhunt that stretched across three states, all three suspects Dexter Bostic, Robert Ellis and Lee Woods were eventually apprehended and convicted—two of murder, and the third for weapons possession. At his widely attended funeral, Timoshenko was posthumously promoted to the rank of Detective. The case garnered national media attention because the weapons used were all illegally obtained handguns. This sparked widespread debate over gun control laws in New York City, and over the process by which firearms are traced by police departments.

Timoshenko and his partner, Officer Herman Yan, had been driving in a marked 71st precinct police car on patrol in Crown Heights, with Timoshenko riding as the passenger, when they spotted a 2003 black BMW sport utility vehicle headed westbound on Lefferts Avenue at 2:30 am. The officers scanned the BMW's license plate on a computer in their police car. When the check came back, it indicated that the plate was assigned to a 2007 Mitsubishi Outlander, not the BMW. Timoshenko and Yan signaled for the vehicle to pull over. The driver complied, turning north onto Rogers Avenue, where both officers got out of their car and approached the stopped vehicle.

Before the officers arrived at the front of the car, Dexter Bostic, 34, opened fire from the passenger's seat with a .45 caliber handgun, striking Timoshenko once in the face and once in the throat. Yan had been approaching on the driver's side, while Timoshenko was coming up from the passenger's side. From the back seat of the BMW, Robert Ellis, 34, shot Yan with a 9mm handgun, striking him in the arm and chest; Yan was saved by his ballistic vest and was able to return fire. A third suspect, 29-year-old Lee Woods, was driving the BMW at the time of the shooting. After firing at least seven rounds at the officers, the three suspects fled the scene. Police later found the abandoned car on Kingston Avenue, about four blocks from where the shooting occurred.

Timoshenko was rushed to Kings County Hospital Center once medical personnel arrived at the scene. Each of the two bullets that struck Timoshenko cut across his spinal cord, just beneath his brain, which left him unable to breathe on his own or to move his muscles. According to doctors, he had no oxygen for 15 to 20 minutes after he was shot because of his initial paralysis. The loss of oxygen left him in a coma since the shooting, so he was placed on life support machines that allowed him to breathe. Tests conducted on July 14 determined that he had no brain activity (matching the definition of legal death in the state of New York); as a result, the doctors pronounced him dead at 4:14 pm and turned off the artificial respirator. He was 23 years old at the time of his death.

Media reports stated that the men committed the crime in an effort to avoid returning to prison, as all three had violent criminal records. Bostic previously served nine years in state prison for assault, robbery, and sodomy in 1990. He was sent to prison again in 2001 to serve three years for armed robbery (in which an accomplice fired shots), resulting in his second felony. In 1992, at the age of 19, Ellis was convicted of first-degree rape and sodomy. Woods was sent to prison in 1997, also at age 19, for illegal weapons possession and assaulting a police officer during his arrest.

If the police identified Bostic even before the shooting occurred, he would have faced a two-year prison sentence for violating the terms of his parole, since he was out past his curfew. After the shooting, police discovered the BMW had been stolen from the Five Towns Mitsubishi car dealership in Inwood, Long Island, where Bostic worked as a salesman. A motor vehicle theft or gun possession conviction would have been Bostic's third felony, likely resulting in a lengthy prison sentence.

Police apprehended Lee Woods at the home of his girlfriend, Nicole Bostic (Dexter Bostic’s sister), in Far Rockaway, Queens, New York, on July 10. He identified Bostic and Ellis as his accomplices, and told police that while he knew his friends had guns, he was unaware they were going to open fire on the officers. City detectives were tipped to the whereabouts of Bostic and Ellis on the afternoon of July 11, after being contacted by a man who, unaware of the suspects' fugitive status, assisted the suspects in their escape by driving them across Long Island, from Far Rockaway to Port Jefferson, New York, before riding a ferry across Long Island Sound to Bridgeport, Connecticut. They then drove west, stopping at a supermarket in Tarrytown, New York, where they purchased food and water, before continuing on to Pennsylvania, according to New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. Remnants of the same food the men purchased were found in a Pennsylvania forest, where investigators had eventually tracked the suspects.

Hundreds of NYPD officers, U.S. marshals, and Pennsylvania State Troopers were involved in the manhunt, using helicopters and four police dogs to assist with the search. By July 11, 2007, the bounty for information leading to the whereabouts of Bostic and Ellis reached $64,000, with the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association proposing an additional $25,000. The driver initially dropped off Bostic and Ellis about 14 miles from where Bostic was finally arrested in Pocono Township, Pennsylvania.