BABY-NAB BUTCHER

Jury hears full horror of preg-ma slay

A BRONX woman who stabbed her pregnant friend to death planned the gruesome attack to ensure the baby would survive, prosecutors said Monday.

Opening statements in the murder trial of Ashleigh Wade featured disturbing details of how the twisted 23-year-old carefully cut her childhood friend, Angelikque Sutton.

Wade’s attorney, Amy Attias, did not deny her client was a killer — but argued she was insane.

The Nov. 20, 2015, murder was carried out in two stages, Assistant District Attorney Meredith Holtzman told a jury.

“The defendant attacked Ms. Sutton by stabbing and slashing her repeatedly in the face and neck,” Holtzman said.

“All of those injuries in the first attack took place from the neck up. The defendant took great care to avoid injuring Ms. Sutton’s abdomen.”

Sutton’s larynx was sliced, so she was unable to scream for help.

“What the defendant did to her next is almost unspeakable,” Holtzman said.

“The defendant took a kitchen paring knife and sliced Ms. Sutton’s abdomen open. Once she had Ms. Sutton’s abdomen open, she cut Ms. Sutton’s uterus entirely out. She cut that uterus open, took baby Jenasis out, and discarded that uterus on the bathroom floor.”

Police arrived at the crime scene in Wakefield roughly 30 minutes after the killing. But before cops showed, surveillance video captured Wade’s boyfriend holding the child, thinking it was his.

Wade admitted to police she’d butchered Sutton, 22.

“I just killed somebody,” Wade said, according to police.

The jury was shown graphic images from the crime scene.

“When you realize that a baby was born under those conditions and the mother passed away, it leaves a mark on your soul,” Officer Polanco Oritz testified following the opening statements.

Even as she admitted to the killing, Wade insisted Jenasis was hers.

“She told the police — she told anyone who would listen — the child was hers,” Holtzman said. The child, Jenasis, lived. “She survived and she thrived,” Holtzman said. “The survival of Jenasis is the proof of the calculation and precision of the attack. The defendant needed Ms. Sutton to die, she needed Jenasis to live.”

Prior to the killing, Wade had tricked friends and family into believing she was pregnant. She spread the rumor through word of mouth and Facebook posts.

She even kept formula, diapers, and baby shoes at her Monticello Ave. home, Holtzman said.

“Except for a baby — she didn’t have a baby. For that, she needed Angelikque Sutton,” she said.

The murder occurred the day Sutton was to be married at a Bronx courthouse. Sutton had thought she was picking up a gift at Wade’s home.

“This wasn’t crazy — this was murder,” Holtzman said.

Attias did not deny the horrendous facts of the case, but emphasized the lack of logic in Wade’s plot.

“Something could have gone horribly and tragically wrong in Wade’s own mind,” Attias said.

“If this was her plan, it was a pretty bad plan . . . there’s no plane tickets, there’s no train tickets. There is no escape that you’ll see evidence of.”