A young woman who was arrested last year for stabbing her boyfriend with a kitchen knife has been found guilty of attempted murder. Yekaterina Pusepa, 23, faces up to 25 years in prison for stabbing then boyfriend Alec Katsnelson on May 11, 2012.
Pusepa and Katsnelson, who had dated on-and-off for about 6 tumultuous months, got into a fight that night after Katsnelson neglected to look after Pusepa's purse after she went to the bathroom at local bar Ryan Maguire’s. “[I] asked him to look over my clutch, which had my phone, my keys and all my belongings,’’ Pusepa told jurors. “When I came out, I found my clutch was unattended in the middle of the bar.I went to go look for him, and he was outside. At that point, I told him I wanted to go home because it frustrated me. I asked him to take care of something, and he was being irresponsible."
They went back to their Gold Street apartment—the fight escalated after Katsnelson received a text from another woman (Katsnelson says it was a nude photo of another woman). He told the jury that she ignored his apologies for 40 minutes before retrieving two nine inch steak knives from the kitchen, and stabbing him in his lungs and nicking his heart.
Pusepa testified that Katsnelson had been violent and beaten her before, so she was just defending herself from another attack: “He was kicking me and started punching me, then hit me upside the head, and that’s when I grabbed the knife,’’ she said.“He went to go swing at me again. That’s when I stabbed him.” But Katsnelson countered, saying he had called the cops on her previously for being physically violent, and even ended up in jail for a weekend as a result.
Regardless, the jury ultimately sided with Katsnelson. Pusepa wasn't helped by the fact that she initially allegedly told cops that a black man had stabbed her boyfriend, and then tried to claim that he had attempted suicide-by-girlfriend.
