Investigators believe the ex-boyfriend of a Chinatown slashing victim hired two gang-bangers to either kill or disfigure the woman – a shocking attack that led a cop to kill one of the assailants.
Sources noted the slashers went for victim Artenida Gjeli’s face, in violence eerily reminiscent of the 1986 attack-for-hire against model Marla Hanson.
Gjeli’s ex, Aleksander Vacaj, 32, a native of Albania now living in Lodi, NJ, has an extensive criminal background including arrests in New York and New Jersey for fraud and witness tampering.
He also faces charges for a 2006 incident when he shot a man in the foot at a Bronx recording studio – and later stalked the victim, law-enforcement sources said.
But the relationship with gorgeous Gjeli, 26, is tangled as well, investigators said.
Cops said Gjeli had also been arrested in the same fraud and witness-tampering case in Lodi as Vacaj.
Cops are on the hunt for Vacaj, hoping to question him in Wednesday night’s bloodshed in Chinatown.
A source told The Post the slashers had a photo of Gjeli – and that investigators believe Vacaj set it up.
“They knew who they were looking for,” the source said. “They were going to hurt her.”
Neighbors said Gjeli had dated Vacaj for several years, but broke up with him several months ago. He finalized a divorce from his wife in January.
On May 17, Gjeli filed an aggravated-harassment charge against Vacaj in Queens after he allegedly slapped her in a restaurant.
On Wednesday, she called detectives in Astoria, to complain that Vacaj had repeatedly called her at her job as a receptionist in a Chinatown condo building and threatened to kill her and her family, police said.
Detective Martin Carreno, 40, took the call from the panicked Gjeli. He went to the building at 10:15 p.m. after his shift.
He had first met her when she filed the May 17 complaint, but had not been assigned to that case. Police officials said it wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to respond to the call.
Shortly after he arrived at the Baxter Street condo, two men, Eugene Moralez and Andres Camue Martinez, both 22 and from The Bronx, stormed in and began slashing away with razors and bottles, police said.
The attackers cut Carreno on the back of his head and Gjeli on face, hands and leg.
“There was no demand for property, no attempt to take property from her. She just described it as an ongoing attempt to attack her,” a police source said.
Carreno then opened fire, killing Moralez and wounding Martinez in the chest and arm.
Gjeli required 23 stitches to close her wounds and Carreno received three staples to his head.
The violence comes 22 years after model Hanson was attacked by two men hired by her landlord and was left with gashes on her face requiring 100 stitches. The landlord had sought revenge after Hanson rebuffed his advances.
Gjeli called Carreno – a 20-year veteran who had never before fired his gun in the line of duty – her “guardian angel.”
“I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him,” she told investigators.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona and Selim Algar