The former girlfriend of disgraced pol Hiram Monserrate on Thursday tried to offer an innocent explanation for how she wound up slicing up her new flame with a samurai sword — telling a Queens court that “accidents happen.”
Karla Barba testified that her fiancé Franklin Larrea had first thrown her to the ground during an argument at their Jackson Heights home in 2016 — and when he came toward her again, she was afraid and grabbed the “first thing I found.”
That “thing” just happened to be a samurai sword they had on display in their apartment, although Barba claimed it was all a blur.
“I only remember that I didn’t want him to get closer to me and then I saw the blood,” she said.
“It’s such a small thing, it was an accident. That could happen to anyone.”
Larrea had testified earlier that Barba first hit him in the head with the sheath still on the sword, but then the cover flew off before she struck a second and third time, badly slicing his arm open.
“You know the head is one of the most vulnerable parts of the body, right?” Assistant District Attorney Mary Kate Quinn asked her during cross-examination.
“Yes, but I didn’t know, I wasn’t looking for where to hit him,” she replied. “Accidents happen.”
She also tried to defend her actions by bringing up her relationship with Monserrate, who was arrested in 2008 for slashing Barba in the face with broken glass — an incident she claimed at the time was also an accident.
“I had an accident before in my face,” Barba began saying — but Judge Deborah Stevens Modica had already ruled that she couldn’t mention the Monserrate case in her testimony, and the jury was ordered to disregard the statement.
Quinn asked Barba to show the court how she moved with the sword after that first hit, leading Barba to ask, “Want me to touch the sword?”
“No, we don’t,” Modica interjected, leading to chuckles from the jury.
Barba was shown photos of other items in the room that appeared to be closer to her than the sword, like some shoes, and asked why she didn’t pick up those instead, but she claimed they weren’t in the apartment at the time — and that it was “a setup.”
According to previous witnesses, Barba failed to call 911 after cutting Larrea, and he instead went to his 12-year-old son for help — before stumbling to neighbors’ apartments and then almost passing out in a pool of his own blood in their building’s lobby.
But she claimed Thursday that the whole thing happened too quickly for her to respond, saying, “In two minutes the police was there.”
Before Barba left the stand, the jurors were given the option of holding the sheathed sword themselves so they could feel the weight of it — with six jurors and one alternate opting to pick up the weapon.
Barba is facing charges of assault, attempted assault and endangering the welfare of a child.
But Larrea is standing by her, and the two are still “in love,” according to her lawyer — just as Barba stood by Monserrate when he was arrested for assaulting her.