The pumped-up personal trainer who was attacked by a jealous ex-boyfriend saved herself and her kids by snatching away his knife and stabbing him — then survived a terrifying ordeal as he tried to hack his way into the bathroom where they sought refuge, the woman said Tuesday.
Kataryzna “Kathy” Russo said downstairs neighbor Francisco “Frank” Carvajal showed up unannounced at her Brooklyn apartment Monday night claiming he wanted to reconcile — but was really hell-bent on killing her for taking up with another guy.
“I told him we were broken up, we were done, there is nothing more to talk about. He said: ‘I got to talk to you’ and kept banging on the door over and over,” said Russo, 35.
“I opened. He immediately pulled the knife. I grabbed it and we struggled. I got it away from him and he got cut.”
Russo then hustled her two children — a girl, 6, and a boy, 7 — inside a bathroom and desperately phoned her new beau for help as Carvajal, 47, used another knife to try and break in.
“He (was) stabbing the door,” the still-shaken mom said.
“But the bathroom lock is broken, so while he is stabbing I have to hold it closed.”
Russo’s current boyfriend, gym owner Rafael Laureano, fought with the heavily muscled and tattooed Carvajal when he arrived at the 820 Ocean Parkway apartment.
But he quickly retreated to the hallway, where he called 911.
Laureano, 51, rushed back inside and attacked Carvajal when cops arrived and broke down the door around 7:20 p.m.
Carvajal was still wielding a knife and refused repeated orders to drop it, according to the NYPD.
Cops then opened fire on Carvajal, who was pronounced dead at the scene.
Laureano was rushed to Maimonides Hospital, where he pronounced dead on arrival from what the NYPD called “trauma to the torso” suffered during the wild melee.
It was unclear if he was killed by Carvajal or a stray police bullet.
Neither Russo nor either of her kids were injured.
A neighbor who witnessed the deadly violence said: “The guy who was shot, the police shot him, one shot through the heart and then through his arm.”
“Then when he was down and they struggled with him to give him first aid, he grabbed a cop’s gun and it went off a few times in the struggle,” the neighbor added.
Next-door neighbor Vadim Citovsky, 83, said he heard Russo’s children “screaming and crying” as the horrific incident unfolded.
“I open the door and saw the woman covered in blood coming out of her apartment,” he said in Russian through a home health-care worker.
“She had no shoes on and blood all over her.”
Citovsky also said he “saw the police kicking the door and the woman police officer shot the door open, it would not open.”
Russo, who returned to the building Tuesday to retrieve her 5-month-old cat, Cubby, said she was worried the incident would cost her custody of her kids with estranged hubby Danny Russo.
A neighbor said Danny works as a UPS driver and had moved out a month ago.