An ungrateful Thanksgiving dinner guest repeatedly stabbed his host during a bloody post-holiday attack on the Lower East Side that left the wounded woman running down the hall and frantically banging on a friend’s door for help, said police and the victim in an exclusive interview.
The 36-year-old victim miraculously survived the horrific attack and was counting her blessings as she recuperated at her Pitt St. apartment Friday, not sure why her friend of two years suddenly turned on her.
“I’m feeling grateful, I’m feeling thankful, I’m feeling blessed because it could have been worse,” she told the Daily News.
Cops charged her attacker, Paris McCoy, 26, with attempted murder, assault and weapons possession. At McCoy’s arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court Friday evening, the prosecutor said McCoy gave a full confession to police after he was arrested. However, at his arraignment, McCoy pled not guilty.
McCoy had been invited over to Thanksgiving dinner at the woman’s apartment at The Lee, a supportive-housing residence at Pitt and E. Houston Sts.
Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News
A blood trail is seen in the hallway of an apartment building on Pitt St. on the Lower East Side after a woman was repeatedly stabbed early Friday. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
“I know him. He’s a friend of mine, so I didn’t expect him to do nothing like that,” said the woman, who wished not to be named. “He came here for Thanksgiving.”
The victim, her older brother and McCoy shared a sumptuous meal together, washed down with a little wine, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary, she said.
“We had pork roast, we had fried chicken, we had macaroni and cheese, potato salad, collard greens (and) corn bread,” she recalled.
After chatting the night away, the victim went to sleep. But the host woke up around 12:30 a.m. to find McCoy looming over her, she said.
“I woke up in bed,” she said. “He was standing over me and he started just repeatedly stabbing me.”
At McCoy’s arraignment Friday evening, prosecutor Geremia Adamo said McCoy stabbed the victim nine times with a butcher’s knife, including in the back of her neck, her left shoulder, right forearm and her leg. The leg wound required more than 20 sutures, Adamo said.
McCoy said nothing as he repeatedly jammed the knife into his victim.
The victim’s older brother quickly jumped in and pulled McCoy off of her and the woman ran out the apartment’s door and down the hall.
“The defendant went to the complaining victim’s home for a gathering on Thanksgiving,” Adamo said. “When the complaining victim fell asleep, the defendant, unprovoked, proceeded to take a butcher knife and stabbed the complaining victim nine times when she was asleep.”
In addition to there being an eyewitness to the attack, surveillance footage captured McCoy running from the fifth floor to the third floor, where he was eventually arrested, Adamo said.
On Friday, a gruesome blood trail, partially sopped up with rags and napkins, could still be found snaking down the hall and into the victim’s apartment. The blood led right to the victim’s bed, where she sat under the covers, relaying her terrifying tale to The News.
Stunned neighbors called 911 as the woman cried out for help. McCoy fled from the victim’s apartment on the fifth floor to an apartment on the third floor, where he was arrested less than two hours later, Adamo said.
“He’s a good-hearted person,” the victim said of her attacker. “He definitely snapped. I’m not sure what happened. He was going through some things.”
EMS rushed her to Bellevue Hospital, where she was treated and released Friday morning.
The woman was in a lot of pain, but thankful to be alive, she said.
“Tell them I survived and I’m grateful!” she told a News reporter, asking her to relay her gratitude to her neighbors who helped her.
But the brush with death has rattled her to the core.
“I’m shook. I’m shooken up,” she said. “I hope he gets a strong punishment. I don’t want him to come back and do it again.”
McCoy has been arrested about six times over the last few years, according to police sources. His crimes include a robbery in 2015 and a burglary in 2023, when he was also arrested for gun possession, cops said.
McCoy was ordered held without bail at his arraignment on Friday.
