A wheelchair-bound Upper East Side woman hooked to an oxygen mask pleaded not guilty Wednesday to stabbing her home health aide, as her lawyers begged a Manhattan judge to spring her from Rikers Island.
Barbara Salberg, 66, was rolled into court for her arraignment looking frail and bent over, her attorneys arguing she is far too sick to survive the city’s notorious jail complex. Defense attorney Toni Messina painted a grim picture of her client’s condition during the hearing before Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Cori Weston.
“(She’s) literally bent over 45 degrees from physical illnesses,” Messina cried out in court.
Salberg, who suffers from lung disease, a blood disorder and other ailments, is currently locked up on $100,000 bail. She had been pushing for home detention, insisting relatives could care for her and that she poses no flight risk.
“She can’t get around, she’s not going to run away,” Messina said of her client.
But Manhattan prosecutors fought hard to keep Salberg behind bars, urging the judge not to be swayed by the elderly defendant’s feeble appearance. They argued the Aug. 8 attack was a deliberate attempt to kill the 54-year-old aide, not some accident or momentary lapse.
“This is the knife I’m going to kill you with,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Kaleigh Shea quoted Salberg as saying, according to prosecutors’ account of the confrontation.
Shea and her team pushed to double Salberg’s bail to $200,000. They also revealed that after allegedly plunging the blade into the aide’s abdomen, Salberg hurled a vicious insult at the bleeding woman.
The crazed defendant called the victim a “crazy b–ch,” prosecutors said, labeling the stabbing “clearly intentional.”
The attack unfolded inside a first-floor apartment at 210 East 73rd St., a ritzy co-op building in one of Manhattan’s wealthiest neighborhoods. Salberg and the aide had been arguing over an oxygen mask when the dispute turned violent, sources said.
Salberg blew kisses to family members seated in the courtroom gallery during Wednesday’s proceeding, a striking gesture from a woman prosecutors describe as a would-be killer.
The defendant faces attempted murder in the second degree and attempted assault in the first degree. If convicted on the top charge, she could spend up to 25 years in prison.
Judge Weston ultimately declined to raise Salberg’s bail, keeping it at $100,000 for now. However, the jurist left the door open to a possible compromise down the line, indicating she would consider placing Salberg on house arrest with electronic monitoring at a future court date.
