A Midtown coffee shop dishwasher who was slashed in the neck during a senseless argument over an occupied bathroom lost a massive amount of blood in the daytime attack and needed 19 stitches to close the gnarly wound, prosecutors said Saturday.
Details about the Wednesday attack outside Moka & Co., an organic Yemeni coffee chain on W. 34th St. near Seventh Ave., were released as Wagner Louis, the man who slashed the 50-year-old employee, was ordered held without bail.
Louis, 32, is accused of attacking the dishwasher after the worker told him that he couldn’t use the bathroom because it was occupied.
“He was, like, ‘Wait, wait, there’s somebody in there,’” Moka & Co. employee Zainab Tabasi told the Daily News Thursday. “And then that kind of turned into an argument, I don’t know how.”
Louis allegedly made a scene and began yelling at staff when he was asked to leave the store. The dishwasher followed Louis outside, where the suspect pulled out a blade and sliced his neck during the 3 p.m. clash, cops said.
“How can you be, like, so disrespectful?” Tabasi asked. “Whatever, just leave.’”
The dishwasher suffered two deep gashes to the right side of his neck and “extensive bleeding from the neck,” prosecutors said at Louis’ arraignment.
“The moment I saw that, I thought, ‘He’s dead,” Tabasi recalled. “I could literally see his veins. I thought he was gone.”
EMS rushed the coffee shop employee to Bellevue Hospital, where he was in critical condition “for several hours” before finally being stabilized.
Louis ran to a waiting white Honda Civic and sped off, but responding police caught him on Park Ave. near E. 33rd St. after a four-block pursuit, cops said. He was charged with attempted murder, assault and weapons possession.
Prosecutors said that Louis has three prior felony convictions, all for selling drugs. He is also out on bail, awaiting trial on an attempted murder arrest for shooting a man in the leg “at close range” in Brooklyn in 2023.
Louis’ attorney, Dean Vigliano, said that he was investigating the case and couldn’t comment further.
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