A 23-year-old woman allegedly used a hatchet to slash a female victim inside an Upper East Side apartment on Monday night before fleeing, stealing cigarettes, and barricading herself inside a freight elevator, police said.
The mayhem that began inside a mutual friend’s building on East 85th Street near Second Avenue was triggered by some type of dispute between the two women, according to cops.
After the suspect slashed the 29-year-old victim in the leg, she climbed down the building’s fire escape before bizarrely serving customers at an East 86th Street bodega then stealing cigarettes before fleeing, according to police and a witness.
The suspect spent about 10 minutes inside the store, according to a worker who knew the woman and sought help from a neighboring diner.
Surveillance footage obtained by The Post shows her behind the counter wielding the hatchet in her right hand.
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“She said ‘they’re coming for me — they’re going to murder me,’” recalled the worker at the store.
“I told you about the stocks. Save my life now,” the suspect said, according to the worker.
The worker said the woman took two packs of smokes, promising to pay him back, before leaving and boarding a bus at First Avenue and East 86th Street.
The woman rode the bus one block west, then got off and locked herself inside a freight elevator inside a building on East 86th Street.
Police freed her and she was taken to Weill Cornell Medical Center with a laceration to her leg, which she is believed to have suffered while descending the fire escape.
A motive for the attack was not immediately clear.
The bodega worker said the woman said “something about how they killed the cat.”
He also said he knows the suspect, whom he had frequently chatted with about financial investments.
“She was very nice. I couldn’t believe she did this. I thought she was the victim.”