Husband who killed wife’s would-be rapist: I didn’t want to do it

6-1-16 New York:

The Bronx cabby who killed a man for trying to rape his wife got a hero’s welcome at his building on Wednesday — and he said he simply had no other choice.

“I’m not a murderer,” Mamadou Diallo said outside his Claremont Village apartment as his neighbors cheered him on.

“I didn’t mean to kill anyone,” he agonized. “I feel bad. I called the police. They did not come fast enough.”

Diallo is facing assault and weapons charges — but no longer a manslaughter rap — for the fatal beating of Earl Nash, 43, on Monday night. But he is already innocent in the court of public opinion.

“That’s him! That’s Diallo!” residents exclaimed, as the 61-year-old cabby made his way to his car. “That guy’s a hero!”

But Diallo disagreed.

“I’m not a hero,” he said. “If anyone touches my family, I’m fighting for my family and myself, that’s it.”

Earlier, during an exclusive interview with The Post outside his brother’s home in Morrisania, Diallo described the difficulty of knowing that he took a man’s life.

I'm not happy because I know a man died and I know they put my name with somebody who died,” he said solemnly. “I do not want to kill that man.”

The Guinea native added that he feels terrible about using a tire iron to batter Nash, though he believes his actions were justified and didn’t warrant criminal charges.

“I defended my wife because she was a victim,” Diallo said. “He hit her head, he take the clothes off my wife and try to rape her. I am not thinking [the police] are going to take me because someone came into my house, take my wife’s clothes off to rape my wife.”

Diallo, a longtime livery driver, was arrested Tuesday morning and initially charged with manslaughter.

The charges were reduced to assault and weapons possession later that night and he was released without bail. After stopping by the 42nd Precinct station house on Wednesday to get his personal belongings, Diallo went back to his brother’s house to check on wife Nenegale, who was left bruised after nearly being raped. “My wife is a little bit sick, but she is doing OK,” he said.

Diallo’s cousin, Aminata Jalloh, described Nenegale’s relief after her husband was released from jail. “She was happy,” Jalloh said. “She hugged him, and she was crying.”

On Monday, Nenegale fought off Nash, a career criminal with more than 15 prior arrests who ripped her clothes off inside the couple’s sixth-floor apartment.

Surveillance footage shows Diallo later coming face to face with the ex-con as he anxiously tries to escape on an elevator.

Legal experts told The Post on Wednesday that even though the Bronx District Attorney’s Office had every right to pursue charges against Diallo, he will likely never see the inside of a prison cell due to the circumstances of the case.

“For the police and for prosecutors, this is the epitome of the thankless case,” explained Jordan Arnold, a former Manhattan homicide and financial-crimes prosecutor who now heads private client services for K2 Intelligence.

“Obviously, and understandably, the public outcry is to celebrate this man. At the same time, the Bronx DA’s office has a dead body on their hands,” he said. “They have a job to do . . . But that said, a grand jury may very well show this case the door.” ..Source.. by Lorena Mongelli, Gina Daidone and Chris Perez