news-record.com

GREENSBORO — The woman at the heart of a scandal that could bring down New York Gov. David Paterson now stars in a sideshow involving glamour photos taken when she lived in Greensboro a decade ago.

Sherr-una Booker said Paterson  aide David Johnson  choked her, ripped off her Halloween costume and pushed her into a mirror last Halloween. No arrest was made, according to the Associated Press, but Booker sought a court order requiring Johnson to stay away.

She told court officials that in the days after the altercation, “the state troopers kept calling and harassing me to drop the charges.”

Paterson himself ultimately spoke with Booker. A day after that call, she didn’t show up for a scheduled court date and the protective order she had sought was vacated.

Booker entered a different kind of spotlight 10 years ago, when a Greensboro photographer spotted her in a Greensboro grocery store and saw a perfect poster model, according to a report Sunday in the New York Daily News.

“She was just drop-dead gorgeous,” photographer Jonathan Dewayne Woods  told the Daily News. “She was what I call 'street fine.’ She wasn’t made up like a model in Cosmopolitan magazine. She was the type who looked good all the time.”

Woods, who made photo posters, approached the single mom and they arranged a photo session at her Greensboro apartment a week later.

The photo released by the Daily News is a head shot of Booker apparently wrapped in a towel, but in a modest pose.

Booker, who now lives in New York City, lived in Greensboro from early 1998 through early 2003, according to search of public records. Records show she lived in apartments on Florida Street and on Montrose Drive. 

Woods lived in Guilford County on Friendway Road  for several years beginning in 2000, a similar search showed . He now lives in Conyers, Ga.,  records show.

Woods could not be reached Monday.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Contact Richard M. Barron at 373-7371 or richard.barron@news-record.com