A man went berserk at an Upper East Side psychologist’s office last night, hacking her to death with a meat cleaver and critically injuring another doctor who ran to her aid when he heard her blood-curdling screams, police said.
The attacker – who police speculated may have been a patient – escaped after the 9:35 p.m. mayhem in the first-floor office of Dr. Kathryn Faughey on East 79th Street.
“He looked like a psycho,” said a local doorman, adding he’d not seen the man before. “I saw him go in and he never came out. He [must have left] through the basement.”
Faughey and Dr. Kent Shinbach were the only two people in the suite of medical offices at the time of the grisly assault.
Faughey had been alone with her attacker, and Shinbach came running when she began to scream, cops said.
It was too late.
The doctor was dead at the scene. Her colleague was critically wounded; he was in stable condition at New York Hospital.
The murder weapon was recovered. Cops weren’t sure if the madman brought it with him, or grabbed it from a small kitchen in the suite.
Faughey, 56, lived across the street from her office, which was blood-spattered and torn apart after the slashing.
“We could see that the blinds were torn down and there were papers strewn about the room,” said neighbor Alexandra Pike, 20, whose eighth-floor apartment in the building where Faughey lived with her husband has a view of the therapist’s office.
Daleen Yeats, the doctors’ office manager, said, “she’s a wonderful, loving person who didn’t deserve this. She was so close with all of us. I’m shocked and devastated. I’m at a loss for words.”
She was not at all surprised that Shinbach risked his life to try to save his colleague. “We’re all so close,” she said.
Faughey, whose practice was called “Adaption-Psychology,” was often sought out by the media for her advice on relationships.
In a profile in Psychology Today magazine, she described herself as a professional with more than 19 years of experience.
“My approach is interactive, focused, and solution-oriented,” she said.
“Sessions move quickly. I give feedback. Very practical and to the point, I practice cognitive psychotherapy effectively – in a warm, clear, and lively manner.”
Additional reporting by Cathy Burke
ecalabrese@nypost.com