The stripper shoved out a fourth-floor window by her boyfriend after she told him she was leaving him for someone else died yesterday, authorities said.
Sheila Cordell, 32, suffered a broken neck and was on a respirator after a Saturday morning brawl with her beau, Edgar Ortega, a deejay at the hip 23rd Street nightclub, Suede.
He gave police two versions of Cordell’s plunge.
First he told investigators he and Cordell began fighting when she was late getting home Saturday morning, adding that she had been depressed and was seeking to get into a different line of work. He said she jumped to her death, cops said.
Several hours later, he changed his story and told cops the pair had a pitched physical battle before he accidentally shoved her out the window.
Investigators appear to have believed Ortega’s second account of events, charging him with second-degree assault before she died.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office yesterday said it has not decided what charges to file for Ortega’s arraignment hearing, which is likely to be today.
Meanwhile, a neighbor of the quarrelsome couple who was woken up by the fierce argument said that as the pair screamed at each other for about 20 minutes another voice was heard warning Ortega to stop fighting.
‘I heard one man tell the other ‘stop it, stop fighting,'” said the neighbor who heard the voices across the airshaft.
“The man shouted continuously, ‘Stop it, you are going to kill her.'”
He said it was unclear whether the second man was inside the couple’s apartment at 9 E. 17th St. in Gramercy Park or yelling from another apartment.
The argument quieted down for about 45 seconds after another man yelled for the couple to “shut the f— up,” the neighbor said, but “one minute later, I hear a loud crash and I see a blonde flying down.”
He said Cordell and the window screen crashed into the airshaft, where she lay “moaning very badly.”
She landed on an air-conditioning compressor.
The dust-up was so loud, firemen from a nearby firehouse called 911 and then rushed over to intervene, but their effort was in vain – Cordell had fallen by the time they arrived.
She was rushed in critical condition to St. Vincents Hospital, where she remained on life support until she died.
Cordell, a native of Ohio who moved to New York around 10 years ago, danced at The VIP Club on West 20th Street, and, according to her cousin, studied part-time at New York University.
Additional reporting by Jamie Schram