The sicko accused of decapitating his girlfriend inside her Lower East Side apartment was arraigned this morning and charged with second-degree murder.
Raul Barrera, 33, was charged during a brief appearance in Manhattan Supreme Court. He was remanded and put on suicide watch.
Barrera, who was shackled, did not say a word during the brief court appearance.
Barrera told cops that he allegedly grabbed a kitchen knife and butchered 23-year-old Sarah Coit after she had begged for her life in the living room of their third-floor apartment at trendy 65 Clinton St. at around 2:30 a.m. on Sunday.
Assistant DA William Beesch said Barrera “violently and horribly stabbed her to death” and “walked out of the apartment while she was still alive.”
He was on his way to Penn station when his dad convinced him to turn himself in, Beesch said in arguing that Barrera is a flight risk because he has ties outside New York.
Cops said Coit had called police on one occasion in January to complain of a verbal dispute with Barrera.
Barrera’s lawyer Paul Feinman said his client is “understandably upset about the entire circumstances.”
“It was a close relationship. It was a romantic relationship,” he said.
Barrera, a vice president at the Coleman Entertainment Group p.r. firm, left the dying Coit sprawled face-up on the floor and fled, authorities said.
He turned himself in to cops at the Ninth Precinct station house, but was transferred to the Seventh Precinct, which had jurisdiction.
He allegedly told cops that he and Coit had fought about breaking up, and claimed that it was she who had first grabbed the knife before he wrested it away. A police source said Coit had initiated the split.
Coit, a 5-foot-10 stunner who ran cross-country at Greenwich HS and had studied advertising and marketing at Hunter College, was still alive when she was rushed to Beth Israel but was pronounced dead about two hours later.
Her father is Lynde Coit, a Cornell-educated lawyer and senior adviser to the CEO at Plasco Energy Group Inc.
The family lives in a $1.4 million home in Greenwich.