The psycho who fatally slashed a youth soccer coach in Greenwich Village over the weekend has fled to Mexico, law-enforcement sources told The Post tonight.
Police identified the fiend this afternoon and put him on a no-fly list, but it was too late – he flew out of the country last night, the sources said.
The suspect, identified as Orlando Orea or Orlando Gutierrez, 32, took an Aero Mexico flight bound for Mexico City, sources said.
The suspect, who lived in Queens, had been identified after a West 14th Street bartender told cops that the killer was a regular at his bar and frequented a city tattoo parlor and cops went to it to talk to people there, the sources said.
Mexico will allow the extradition of suspects to the US as long as they don’t face the death penalty, one source said. New York state does not have the death penalty.
Police sources earlier today said the perp may have mistaken coach Michael Jones, 25, for a good Samaritan who had broken up a drunken fight between the suspect and a woman in a West Village bar earlier Sunday night.
“The perp is in a bar on 14th street, he gets into an argument with a female. After he’s arguing with the female, a guy and a couple other guys come over, and they try and intervene in the fight. They take the girl away, and they all leave,” a source told The Post.
The ponytailed perp, a Hispanic man 25 to 30 years old, follows the group out — possibly to see which direction they were headed — and then goes back inside the bar, Bunga’s Den, at 137 W. 14th St., sources said.
“He continues to drink beer for another half-hour. He then walks out with another woman. As they walk up the block, they pass the victim, who is making a phone call,” the source said.
The unidentified woman who the suspect left with told cops she continued walking when the perp and Jones — a New York Red Bulls youth coach who had never been in the bar — exchanged words.
The slasher then shoved Jones against a building, pulled a knife and slashed him across the chest and throat, severing his ear, as he fought for his life.
The perp “definitely knew what he was doing with the knife. He expertly cut the body, it was not just a random stabbing,’’ a source said.
The woman who left the bar the same time as the perp told cops she was too drunk to remember many details, and it’s unclear if she left the place actually with him or just conincidentally at the same time.
“Words were exchanged, but woman keeps walking. Is it plausible that he mistakes the victim for one of the guys in the bar? it is, but he wasn’t there,” the source said.
Asked about a scenario of mistaken identity, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters today, “We’re not ruling that out. It’s still a possibility.
“There’s some information that there was a fight in a bar,’’ he said. “At this time, we don’t believe that the victim was involved in fighting in the bar.”
Kelly said detectives are focusing on 14th Street bars west of where the victim was found between Fifth and sixth avenues and seeking new video evidence as they search for the twisted killer
“We’re still looking at video or attempting to locate more video. We are narrowing it down to events that happened on 14th Street and some activity in some bars on 14th Street,” he said.
Jones’ father, Perry, said from England that the heartbroken family will fly his body back to their suburban home north of Liverpool for burial.
“We just want to get Michael home as quickly as possible,’’ Perry Jones told ClickLiverpool.com, a local Web site.
Additional reporting by Josh Margolin and Bob Fredericks