Bloody: Yekaterina Pusepa was discovered on a Manhattan sidewalk sobbing and covered in blood
A beauty accused of stabbing her boyfriend in their lower Manhattan apartment was inconsolable as she was arraigned on assault and attempted murder charges Saturday.
Swollen-eyed Yekaterina Pusepa, 22 — wearing sweatpants and a black leather jacket over a baggy white T-shirt — sobbed in Manhattan Criminal Court as a judge ordered her held in lieu of $75,000 bail.
Her outfit was a dramatic change in costume from the bloodstained threads she was found wearing the day before.
Police found the Latvia-born Pusepa covered in blood and hovering over the body of Alec Katsnelson, 22, outside their Gold St. apartment building early Friday, sources said.
Katsnelson was sprawled out on the sidewalk with blood seeping out of a knife wound to his chest, the sources said.
He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was in stable condition Saturday following surgery.
Moments before the wild stabbing, neighbors heard a commotion coming from the couple’s second-floor pad.
“I heard a scuffle, woke up and said, ‘What’s going on?’ ” said one neighbor, who declined to give her name. “She was screaming at him, ‘Don’t leave!’ He looked like he was on his way out.”
Sources said that’s when Pusepa — armed with two knives — attacked him in the hallway and plunged a blade into his chest, piercing his lung and heart.
“She was screaming in the hallway, ‘Call 911!’ ” the neighbor said. “I saw him on the ground and I saw her over him.”
Witnesses told police that Pusepa helped her wounded beau downstairs before he collapsed on the sidewalk.
Neighbors said they often hear the couple fight, but no one expected it to end in bloodshed.
“I hear them argue a lot, loudly, at like 4 a.m.,” said another neighbor, who did not give his name. “He bangs on the door. She doesn’t let him in.”
In March, Katsnelson was arrested for assaulting Pusepa, cops and neighbors said. He spent a weekend in jail, and Pusepa got an order of protection against him, but the couple stayed in the apartment together, cops and neighbors said.
Her defense attorney, Kevin O’Connell, said that Pusepa — who is trying to become a U.S. citizen — just fell victim to a volatile relationship.
“I think we may very well have a meritorious defense,” O’Connell said. “He did act aggressively toward her.”
By Irving Dejohn, Corinne Lestch AND Joe Kemp / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
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