Opinion
August 5, 1991
Appeal from the County Court, Westchester County (Carey, J.).
Ordered that the judgment is affirmed.
The defendant contends that certain physical evidence was seized unlawfully. We disagree and find that the police officer's stop of the vehicle in which the defendant was traveling was not improper (see, People v De Bour, 40 N.Y.2d 210, 215; People v Basket, 159 A.D.2d 711; see also, People v Chestnut, 51 N.Y.2d 14, 21, cert denied 449 U.S. 1018; cf., People v Yiu C. Choy, 173 A.D.2d 883). We further find that since the officer was in a lawful position to observe the handgun, three quarters of which was lying in plain view on the floor of the vehicle, the evidence was properly seized (see, People v Price, 54 N.Y.2d 557, 562). It was at that point that the defendant was placed under arrest. There was nothing improper in the officer's action of shining his flashlight into the vehicle (see, People v Price, supra, at 563; People v Pena, 158 A.D.2d 480).
Contrary to the defendant's contention, the hearing court properly declined to suppress the in-court identification testimony of the complaining witnesses. Although a showup identification conducted by the police was impermissibly suggestive, it is well settled that even in a case in which "`a suggestive identification procedure [was] employed by police, a witness will nonetheless be permitted to identify the defendant in court if that identification is based on an independent source'" (People v Greer, 173 A.D.2d 557; see, People v Johnson, 129 A.D.2d 739, 740; People v Smalls, 112 A.D.2d 173). Where, as here, one of the complaining witnesses observed the defendant for 10 minutes and the other for 30 minutes while they were held captive by him and where, as here, both witnesses were able to provide accurate descriptions of the defendant to the police prior to viewing him after his arrest, they had an independent source for the in-court identifications (see, People v Greer; supra, People v Burris, 171 A.D.2d 668).
Finally, there is no merit to the defendant's claim that the statements he made to the police, after he requested to speak with them just 10 minutes after his arrest and after he signed a Miranda card, were anything but voluntarily and knowingly made (see, e.g., People v Sirno, 76 N.Y.2d 967). Kunzeman, J.P., Rosenblatt, Miller and Ritter, JJ., concur.