The pint-sized ring leader of a gang of seven rampaging lesbians collapsed shrieking in a Manhattan courtroom yesterday as a judge sentenced her to 11 years in prison for the brutal beat-down and stabbing of a man who promised to turn them “straight” in Greenwich Village last summer.
“Noooo!” 4-foot-11, 95-pound Patreese Johnson wailed after learning her startling sentence – the highest several defense lawyers had ever heard of for a nonfatal stabbing.
“No!” she sobbed. “Please! Nooooo!”
Johnson, 20, fell to the courtroom floor and was carried out kicking and screaming.
She and her three co-de fendants, who were also sentenced yesterday, were convicted of second-degree gang assault during a sensational trial in April.
Renata Hill, 25, was sentenced to eight years in prison; Venice Brown, 19, got five; Terraine Dandridge, 20, got 31/2.
The gang’s remaining three women are serving six-month prison terms after pleading guilty to lesser charges in the attack on Queens filmmaker Dwayne Buckle, 29.
Johnson had been additionally convicted of first-degree gang assault for stabbing Buckle in the gut, and could have received anywhere from five to 25 years.
The women claimed they attacked Buckle in self-defense after he lunged at them during an argument in which he allegedly said sex with him would turn them straight.
Surveillance video belies that story, the prosecutor said in court.
It shows at a brief lull in the brawl – and then the seething, Sapphic septet striking anew.
“They didn’t run away,” Assistant District Attorney Sharon Laveson told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Edward McLaughlin. “They didn’t call the police. They were not fearful. They were emboldened.”
Buckle claimed on the witness stand he merely said hello to Johnson, who he told jurors was “the slightly pretty one” in the group.
The women took the stand to counter that Buckle actually said, “I want some of that,” as he pointed to Johnson’s crotch.
Whatever Buckle may have said doesn’t matter, the judge said.
“Insulting words, stupid words . . . don’t justify criminal conduct, don’t justify hurting a human being, don’t justify group assaultive conduct,” he said.