Boyfriend arrested in NYC Irish pub slaying after bartender butchered on the job: police

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An Irish bartender’s boyfriend has been arrested by police after allegedly stabbing her in the neck on her shift just after happy hour on Saturday. 

Marcin Pieciak of Queens, 36, was arrested at approximately 12:38 p.m. on April 1 and charged with second-degree murder and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the death of 41-year-old Irish native Sarah McNally. 

Two days earlier, McNally and Pieciak were rushed to NYC Health + Hospitals Elmhurst from the Céilí House in Queens. There, McNally was pronounced dead and Pieciak was in critical condition from self-inflicted knife wounds to his neck and back, according to New York City police. 

Bar patrons recounted the “horrible” attack in interviews with the New York Daily News, which reported that moments after “just standing there talking” with customers around 6:30 p.m., McNally was stabbed in the neck by Pieciak and fell bleeding to the floor. 

WOMAN WORKING AT IRISH BAR STABBED TO DEATH ON SHIFT IN FRONT OF HORRIFIED PATRONS

Sarah McNally, left, was stabbed in the neck while on her shift at the Céilí House pub in Queens on Saturday, an NYPD spokesperson said. (@Sarah Mac/Facebook)

Sources told the New York Post that the boyfriend held knives in each hand when he was approached by responding police, and that they used stun guns on him when he refused to drop the weapons. 

It is unclear what prompted the barroom slaying, which police characterized as a domestic incident. A New York Police Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital that Pieciak had no prior arrests with their agency – but he had been arrested for domestic violence before, according to the New`York Daily News. The Queens District Attorney’s Office declined to comment at press time.

McNally was allegedly stabbed by her boyfriend Marcin Pieciak at the Céilí House pub. (Fox5/@Sarah Mac via Facebook)

The pair had been living together for several months before Saturday’s bloody chaos, according to the Post. 

Dorrie O’Connor, McNally’s mother, told the Irish Mirror that her daughter had been living in New York City for over a decade. 

“My daughter was murdered – there is nothing else to say,” O’Connor told reporters from the outlet at her home in Longford, Ireland. 

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A memorial for slain bartender Sarah McNally outside the Céilí House in Queens where she worked and was killed. (Roni Jacobson for NY Daily News via Getty Images)

Pub patron Mike Green told the Daily News that he knew the couple and “still can’t believe it” or “picture it” after the incident. 

“They was always together. M is cool,” Green said, using the boyfriend’s nickname and saying that the couple often hung out at the Maspeth watering hole. “Both of them. That’s why it blew my mind a little bit.”

“Sarah is good people,” Green said of the victim. “She helps people. Everybody owes her money.”

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McNally was from the county of Longford in Ireland, where she previously worked as a corrections officer, according to news reports. (@Sarah Mac/Facebook)

The stabbing is the second death of an Irish woman in Queens in the last six months. Last October, 39-year-old restaurant worker and mother Denise Morgan was shot dead in her apartment by her former partner Joed Taveras, the Irish Mirror reported. 

A 27-year-old man was shot in an argument during the wee hours of the morning outside the Maspeth pub in 2022, the Sunnyside Post reported. 

McNally was a “sweet, innocent girl from Longford,” a county in central Ireland, bar regular Mike Lambe, 62, told the Post. She had worked at the pub for just a year.

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Green told the Daily News that McNally worked as a corrections officer on the Emerald Isle before moving to the States. 

“She was innocent!” said Lambe, who lives just two blocks from the pub, adding that the street has regular issues with drug dealers and users. 

“It’s been getting worse and worse,” he told the outlet.

Christina Coulter is a U.S. and World reporter for Fox News Digital. Email story tips to christina.coulter@fox.com.