(Seth Gottfried)
(Seth Gottfried)
(Seth Gottfried)
(Seth Gottfried)
GORY AFFAIR: A crying Yekaterina Pusepa (above), bloodied from the stab wounds suffered by boyfriend Alec Katsnelson (inset), is taken away yesterday in cuffs.
Her face is the picture of innocence — but her clothes tell a different story.
Cops found Yekaterina Pusepa standing on a lower Manhattan sidewalk yesterday drenched in blood — blotchy handprints covering her arms and T-shirt.
Lying on the street was her boyfriend, splayed out with a knife wound to the chest.
She was sobbing furiously — but last night it turned out she was crying crocodile tears as cops charged her with stabbing her beau in a fit of rage inside their Gold Street apartment.
Pusepa, 22, was hauled off in handcuffs from the grisly scene around 3:30 a.m. yesterday. Hours later she was hit with charges of attempted murder and assault in the second degree.
Sources said Pusepa had tried to wiggle out of responsibility by laying out a strange defense during hours of questioning.
She told cops she grabbed a kitchen knife during a heated argument with Alec Katsnelson — but that he took it from her hand and plunged it into his own chest.
But sources said she changed her story under questioning. And after Katsnelson, 22, got out of surgery at Bellevue Hospital yesterday he said she stabbed him with one of two knives that cops found.
He and Pusepa have been dating since November, when they moved into a second-floor, $2,300-a-month apartment with Katsnelson’s cousin, said a childhood friend.
Their relationship soon soured and he once tried to kick her out. Cops were called at one point after they got into a fight — and he spent the weekend in jail.
“I hear them arguing a lot, yelling at each other,” a neighbor said. “But I never saw them fighting.”
Their fighting escalated early yesterday.
“I heard a lot of yelling, two people screaming,” said a 26-year-old student who lives in the building. “A lot of the screaming was coming from a woman.”
The argument was so intense, another neighbor was heard yelling, “You guys need to shut up!”
“She was screaming more and louder,” the neighbor said. “It was anger and hostility like someone making threats. You could tell there was a fight.”
Police were called to the building by a different neighbor, Evelyn Gentile, who was awoken by Pusepa’s screams to “Call 911!”
She told the operator, “There is someone bleeding on the street — he’s either shot or stabbed!”
Gentile said Pusepa helped Katsnelson downstairs — his body drenched in blood from neck to waist.
“She was lying on top of him,” Gentile added. “She looked scared.”
Katsnelson’s mother, Lena Katsnelson, told The Post that her son was in the process of getting a restraining order against Pusepa. She described her as a violent girl who’s attacked the Duane Reade worker in the past.
“He’s in love with her,” Lena Katsnelson said. “I tell him this is the wrong relationship but he wouldn’t listen.”
This is not Pusepa’s first brush with the law.
In 2009, she was busted in California for driving under the influence on Christmas Day.
Additional reporting by Jennifer Bain and Kirstan Conley