I acted in self defence.

The unhinged Bronx woman who stabbed an expectant mother then ripped the unborn child out of the dying woman’s womb claimed to police she was trying to “save the baby” after knifing the mother in self defense, police sources said Saturday.

 After first claiming she had just given birth to the blood-soaked baby herself, Ashleigh Wade, 22, later claimed victim Angelikque Sutton attacked he
first inside Wade’s home on Monticello Ave. in Wakefield about 2 p.m. Friday.

Wade claimed Sutton lunged at her with a knife, but she wrestled it away from her and jammed it into the pregnant woman’s neck, then cut open the dying woman’s stomach to save the 8-and-a-half-month old baby.


“She said she wanted to save the baby,” a police source with knowledge of the case said Saturday.

Wade remained in Jacobi Medical Center Saturday morning undergoing a psychiatric evaluation. Charges against her were pending. Wade has never been arrested before, police said.

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Angelikque Sutton (pictured) was eight-and-a-half months pregnant when she was attacked Friday. She was rushed to the hospital, where she died. The baby is recovering.
Sutton’s family declined to talk to reporters Saturday morning as they left Montefiore Medical Center, where the baby, named Genesis, was recovering.

Wade told police that the two went to the fifth grade together, lost touch, then rekindled their friendship recently on Facebook.

In the days before the murder, Wade said she and Sutton socialized at Applebees in Co-op City and even went to an area Toys R’ Us in anticipation of Sutton’s baby.

But their friendship soured Friday when they started “talking about the past,” Wade told police, according to sources.

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Crime scene officers carry evidence into the 47 Precinct in the Bronx. Wade was found at the scene of the knifing, and admitted to stabbing Sutton "as many times as she could."
After the explosion of violence, Wade called her boyfriend, Angel Praylow, 27, and told him to come over right away “because she did something really bad,” police sources said.

When police arrived at 2:20 p.m., Genesis was surrounded by Praylow and his two friends, wrapped in a jacket.

Wade was sitting on the stoop and admitted she stabbed Sutton “as many times as she could,” a police source said.

Sutton was found barely alive, police said. She had been stabbed repeatedly in her neck and body and also had a deep cut across her stomach, police said.