The jilted ex-boyfriend of a Long Island coed who was left partially blind in a 2021 acid attack was busted Tuesday for masterminding the cowardly scheme — as prosecutors said he hired the wannabe rapper who allegedly carried out the crime.
Shaquille Coke, 31, allegedly hired 29-year-old Terrell Campbell to throw acid in the face of Nafiah Ikram as she stood in her Elmont driveway after returning from work at CVS in March 2021 — as part of a demented revenge plot because she dumped him a month earlier, prosecutors said.
The cup was filled with 70% sulfuric acid, which melted her contact lenses and left second- and third-degree burns on her face, arms and chest, leaving the victim scarred and blind in one eye.
“Ikram dumped Coke a month earlier and he couldn’t deal with it,” Nassau Assistant District Attorney Brian Rodriguez said in court as Coke was arraigned for orchestrating the shocking attack.
“What we now know is that it was this defendant sitting in the driver’s seat of that car, waiting for his accomplice to return after carrying out this defendant’s twisted version of revenge.”
He said it was “because Nafia Ingram did not give him the praise and attention he believed he deserved.”
The victim, who had been a Hofstra pre-med student at the time of the attack, told The Post that she thought to herself, “God please, I’m 21 years old. This is not how I want to die.”
Outside the courtroom Tuesday, the now 26-year-old Ikram told reporters she was still trying to make sense of it.
“It’s a lot right now,” she said. “It’s a big shock and right now, I’m trying to just decompress and figure out how I’m feeling emotionally so that’s all I can say right now but I’m happy that this day has come.”
The case remained unsolved until February, when Campbell, a 29-year-old wannabe rapper who calls himself “Yung Based Prince,” was charged in the attack.
Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said investigators later linked Coke to the crime.
“The defendant, disgustingly and cruelly, called Nafia ‘Freddy Krueger,’” Donnelly said, referring to the disfigured fictional villain in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie franchise.
“Coke admitted that he told Campbell he wanted something — and I quote — ‘devastating’ to happen to Nafia,” she said. “That karma would take care of it. Now, I don’t know if I believe in karma. But I believe in justice and justice has come knocking for Mr. Coke.
“This was a young woman mere steps away from safety,” she added. “A few yards separated her from an ordinary night, and an ambush that robbed her of the typical life a 21-year-old woman should have.”
The Brooklyn resident popped up on the police radar after posting a music video titled “Obsidian” on YouTube, which appeared to describe the assault on Ikram.
“On the street in the night like a hitman assassin, try to run up, have your face burning in acid,” he raps in the clip, which was posted two years after the attack.
Following the incident, Campbell allegedly searched for “sulfuric acid remover” on his phone, which prosecutors said was to figure out how to clean up spilled acid in his car.
Coke, who is from Brooklyn, attended Nazareth Regional High School, a Catholic school in the borough, and went on to graduate from Hofstra University in 2017, according to his Facebook profile.
In court, he was animated before the judge, fidgeting a repeatedly mouthing the word “no” as prosecutors detailed the charges against him.
Defense attorney Kenneth Montgomery called the case against his client, who is about to graduate from nursing school, “circumstantial,” and said Campbell was a “self-interested” witness in the case.
Coke pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree assault, criminal possession of a weapon and unlawfully possessing noxious materials.
He was ordered held without bail at his arraignment Tuesday.
