The beautiful girl brutally slain along with her toddler brother said she had been “dancing” and seemed “happy” just before she was allegedly slaughtered by her nanny, said a neighbor who saw the children just a half hour before she heard their mother’s horrified screams.
Lucia, 6, and Leo, 2, were found dead by their mother, Marina Krim, in a bathroom of their Upper West Side apartment, cops said.
But just before that, Lucia was still a carefree kid.
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“She [Lucia] looked so delightful. . . I asked her if she was maybe going on a play date or something and she said no, she was going home,” said neighbor Charlotte Friedman, who rode the elevator with the two kids and her nanny. “I said, ‘What did you do,’ and she said, ‘Dancing.’ And that was it — they were only on the second floor so they left.”
Friedman described the girl as, “Happy, happy, happy.”
Later in her apartment, she heard the heart-wrenching screams of Marina, and went out in the mezzanine of the tony apartment building, where the mother was clutching her surviving middle child, Nessie, 3.
“She was bent over the child, screaming and holding onto the only live child she still had. … She was severely traumatized and those screams were definitely primal screams because they were not even human,” said Friedman. “They were very deep, dark screams.”
The nanny and alleged killer, Yoselyn Ortega, 50, always seemed cold, she said.
“The nanny just smiled — and nothing,” she said of the elevator encounter. “She was a colder type [than] most nannies I have encountered.”
Marina had arrived at her tony West 75th Street home at 5:34 p.m. after taking Nessie to swimming lessons at a YMCA.
Ortega failed to meet her for dance lessons, so she returned home, said Commissioner Ray Kelly.
The building’s doorman told Krim the nanny hadn’t left, and she went upstairs to find the reason for the hold-up.
She walked into the bathroom, where she found her babies laying in the tub with stab wounds all over their bodies.
That’s when Ortega slashed her own throat in front of Marina, Kelly said.
“Something happened to my kids!” screamed the sobbing mom, who wrapped the nanny’s neck with a towel.
The doorman, Glen Loody, heard her and called 911. “She was crying. She was screaming,” he said.
The kids appeared to be breathing as they were rushed to St. Luke’s Hospital but were pronounced dead on arrival.
Ortega, who is in police custody, was taken to New York-Cornell Hospital, unresponsive, in critical but stable condition. Police believe she may have taken pills, a law-enforcement source said.
She has no criminal record and had not yet been charged with a crime late last night, sources said.
The children’s paternal grandmother, Karen Krim, said Ortega came into the family’s life about a year ago.
Up until then, Marina Krim was a stay-at-home mom and cared for the kids exclusively. The Krims decided to hire a nanny when Leo was born.
Marina and Kevin Krim had been extra careful in hiring Ortega — and even spent nine days with her family in the Dominican Republic beforehand.
“Kevin told me that she was a nice girl,” the grandmother told The Post, sobbing. “How could she do something like that?
“The children were angels.”
Ortega’s niece, Katherine Garcia, 28, said her aunt had seemed a little off and was “acting kind of nervous lately.”
“This is just shocking,” she said. “She loved those kids. I don’t know what would make her do this.”
The children’s father, CNBC executive Kevin Krim, was returning from a business trip to San Francisco and was notified once he arrived in the city last night, a source said.
Police took him to St. Luke’s.
Marina Krim diligently posted thousands of pictures chronicling her beloved children’s lives in an online journal — from apple-picking and family vacations to strolls down Broadway.
In her latest entry, posted just three hours before finding Lucia and Leo dead, the loving mom wrote about her son learning to put words together.
“Leo speaks in the most adorable way possible,” Marina Krim wrote, describing her mood at the time as “amused.”
Neighbors described the Krims as a happy, young family.
“It’s horrifying,” said one resident, who met the nanny for the first time Wednesday.
“She was very quiet — she just stared ahead.”
Another neighbor said, “I just don’t understand. It’s so senseless.
“A nanny would be the last person I’d think would ever do something like that. I’m in shock. Total disbelief.”
Originally from the West Coast, the Krims moved to the building, called the La Rochelle, a couple of years ago.
Just last month, all three kids were at their aunt’s wedding.
Leo was a ring bearer and his sisters were flower girls.
The family pet was a retired racing greyhound named Babar.
This morning, the CEO of Comcast, which controls 51 percent of CNBC parent company NBCUniversal, expressed his sympathy for Krims during the cable company’s earnings call.
“The father of the children was part of our CNBC family,” CEO Brian Roberts said as he wrapped up the call, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“So, I just wanted to say on behalf of all of us at CNBC and Comcast and NBCUniversal and many others around the nation how touched and sad we are by this unspeakable act. And we will do anything we can to support the family in [this] awful time. Thank you, all, and we’ll go back to our jobs, but have them in our thoughts and prayers.”