HS slay vic was warned

A Bronx teen fatally stabbed by a bullied classmate was warned just before the attack that the kid had a knife, the defendant’s lawyer said in court Tuesday.

A student named “Frankie” told victim Matthew McCree that their classmate Abel Cedeno had the weapon mere minutes before the 15-year-old was fatally stabbed through the heart, said Cedeno’s lawyer, Christopher Lynn.

Frankie “grabbed Matthew and said, ‘Don’t do that. [Cedeno’s] got a knife. He just showed it,’ ” Lynn told the judge, as he requested that each of the 25 students and two teachers who saw McCree punch Cedeno just before the stabbing testify before the grand jury.

Cedeno, 18, was absent from Tuesday’s hearing, which was packed with protesters and supporters who spilled out into the hallway.

A second lawyer representing Cedeno, Robert Feldman, said the teen wasn’t in court to “save time” as he prepared his own grand-jury testimony.

“Not that he wants to hide from the family or anybody else,” the lawyer said.

McCree’s mother has griped that she has yet to see her son’s killer face-to-face.

Cedeno, who is bisexual, says he was punched twice in the face by McCree before Cedeno pulled the blade in their classroom at the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation in East Tremont on Sept. 27. Cedeno is accused of then knifing a second classmate, Ariane Laboy, 16, who survived.

“He wasn’t going to fight back. He never has,” Lynn said of Cedeno. “He has been in the school for years, he grew his hair all the way down to his shoulders so he can cut it off and donate it, while [other students] pulled it and called him a girl and called him a sissy every day.”

Cedeno’s family and lawyers maintain the teen reported the bullying to teachers for years, to no avail.

“This is a gay-bullying case,” Feldman said. “It’s all about the failure of the school to prevent bullying.”

McCree’s family maintains that Matthew was no bully.

“[Cedeno] didn’t know either of the children that he stabbed,” seethed McCree’s mother, Louna Dennis. “So what was his problem? At the end of the day, gay or straight, he’s a murderer.”