A woman allegedly choked by a drunken Manhattan prosecutor dressed as Superman during a brawl in a Murray Hill bar last Halloween broke down in tears as she recounted the terrifying attack in court Thursday.
“I was petrified. I thought he was trying to kill me,” Kirsten Schuck, 31, said at the nonjury trial of Eli Cherkasky, 35.
Her nightmare began in the early hours of Nov. 1 when Cherkasky, after a night of heavy drinking, began searching for his coat inside the Failte bar on Second Avenue.
He picked up Schuck’s purse and scarf from a chair beside her and threw it down, and she angrily told him not to touch her things.
The dispute between the drunken strangers quickly escalated.
“He screamed at me, ‘You c- -t,’ and started rushing toward me,” she said. “I splashed beer in his face. I thought it would slow him down or stop him.”
He then slammed her into a railing that overlooked a staircase, then dragged her to the floor and choked her, she said. It took four men to pull him off her.
Defense lawyer Paul Shechtman insisted Schuck was the real aggressor and had slugged Cherkasky and tossed beer in his face before clumsily falling against the railing and injuring herself.