New York- He’s no lady.
A transvestite hooker is on trial in Manhattan for allegedly trying to murder a cabby on Christopher Street by plunging the business end of his 4-inch-heeled stiletto shoe through the driver’s skull.
At the time of the pre-dawn attack in February 2004, the tranny was insisting on a ride uptown, and the cabby was insisting he was off duty. But this was no minor scuffle, lead prosecutor Martha Stolley told jurors in opening statements yesterday.
Instead, Carlos Sanchez, 32, turned his shoe into “an instrument of destruction,” she said, plunging the pointed heel into the cabby’s head so hard, “shards of bone embedded in his brain,” causing permanent paralysis in the right side of his body.
Yesterday’s star witness was the victim, Barun Ghosh, a 38-year-old Queens father of 9-month-old twin sons.
Like many immigrant cabbies, Ghosh, who is from Calcutta, was highly educated in his native country, but preferred to work 12-hour shifts behind the wheel so he could raise a family in the land of opportunity.
Ghosh holds a masters in Bengali literature and has worked as a Sanskrit translator and a lecturer on Hindu scripture.
“The United States is the land of freedom,” he told jurors, speaking through an interpreter. “And New York especially is the land of the free.”
Ghosh said he had his off-duty light on when his attacker hopped into the cab at Christopher Street near Seventh Avenue.
“He used some bad words. He said ‘f – – – you. Take me to uptown.’ ”
Ghosh got out of his car and offered to help find another cab.
“Oh?” he said his assailant answered. “You are not taking me? Then I will teach you a lesson.”
The tranny, he said, then grabbed one of his stilettos, and began striking at his head. “It was very hard; very hard,” Ghosh remembered. “That moment, I fell, and from my head, it is bleeding.
“Bleeding all over, so that I couldn’t see.”
Sanchez, whose rap sheet is filled with drug and prostitution convictions, sat in Manhattan Supreme Court with a white ribbon securing his ponytail and a slight moustache.
He is arguing that prosecutors simply have the wrong transvestite.
Defense lawyer Daniel Parker told jurors they’d hear testimony from a man who, only a block away and just moments after the attack, helped a different transvestite fix a broken metal stiletto heel.