By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — A construction worker charged with savagely beating a 29-year-old nurse who refused to dance with him at a Midtown bar backed out of a guilty plea deal Thursday, defying prosecutors' and the judge's expectations.
Mbarek Lafrem, 31, was charged with attempted murder and sex assault and faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted. Under a plea agreement with prosecutors, Lafrem could have gotten between 12 - 18 years in prison plus probation.
The former construction worker in Pennsylvania previously confessed to the crime, blaming his actions on a drinking problem.
But Thursday Lafrem refused to admit to the March 11, 2010 incident, saying in court that he was too drunk to remember what happened.
"I don't remember anything. I was drunk," Lafrem told Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Charles Solomon Thursday in a mixture of Spanish and English, after being asked if he slammed the victim's head against the wall and the toilet.
But Lafrem had no trouble Thursday remembering that he acted in self-defense.
"She pushed me. She smacked me. She bit me," he said. "That is what I remember," he added through an interpreter.
"Only me and her and God know what happened," he added. "There are no witnesses."
Prosecutors said that Lafrem had a brief interaction on the dance floor with his victim, where "he twirled her around."
But things turned ugly when he followed her to the ladies room in the basement and he forced his way into the bathroom stall door, prosecutors said.
"She began yelling at him and she was struck and that was her last memory," Assistant District Attorney Shanda Strain said Thursday.
The woman, whose identity is being witheld, suffered skull fractures and facial injuries. Prosecutors said she was found by her friends covered in blood and with her pants removed and left beside her.
Lafrem was caught on videotape a few minutes later leaving the bar and stopping at a bodega where he was seen stealing beer, prosecutors said.
Lafrem's lawyer, Yana Roy, said Thursday's back-out may have been the result of a language barrier and a learning disability on Lafrem's part.
"It's his choice, it's his right" whether to accept a plea deal, Roy said. "He's facing a long time — over a decade in jail."
Solomon said he would give Lafrem until Feb. 23 to reconsider the offer.