Murderer Gets the Max in Girlfriend Slay

By RYAN SIT and STEPHANIE BERZON

An abusive boyfriend was given 25 years to life in prison on Tuesday for viciously stabbing his girlfriend to death.

Raul Barrera, 34, pleaded guilty in September to repeatedly stabbing Sarah Coit, 23, in their Lower East Side apartment.  Barrera cycled through five different knives, including two butcher’s knives, as he stabbed her 30 times.

When he was done Barrera changed his clothes, left his girlfriend of three years dying on the floor, and caught a cab, the evidence showed.  He directed the driver to Penn Station.

Barrera expressed his regret in court.  “If I could replace my life for her’s right now, I would,” air jordan 13 femmes he said, surrounded by three police officers and his attorney.  “This will torment me my whole life.”

The victim’s lawyer Walter Bogdanos, Coit’s urged Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Richard Carruthers to lock up Barrera and, “never, never, never, let him go.”

On April 10, 2011, Coit was preparing to meet her father for brunch to celebrate finding a new apartment at 63 Clinton St.  She never made it.  Instead, police found her lying on the floor of the new apartment, metal from a kitchen knife imbedded in her skull and her intestines spilling out of her body.

Barrera called his father en route to the train station and told him what he had done.  Barrera’s father convinced his son to turn himself in.

In an attempt for leniency Paul Feinman, Barrera’s lawyer, reminded Caruthers of his voluntary surrender and said Barrera had a history of mental illness.  Feinman said Barrera suffered from depression and had never received treatment for a suicide attempt after his divorce in 2000.

Barrera had a history of abusing girlfriends, including seven domestic violence arrests, according to published reports.

“You could have avoided this self destruction, to leave her alone to live her life,” said Carruthers to Barrera, as he handed down the maximum sentence.