The creep who forced his girlfriend to walk down a Harlem street naked and filmed it, tried to make a buck off his sick stunt, prosecutors said at his trial Friday.
Jasson Melo, 24, was so proud of his abusive viral video that he tried to sell souvenirs quoting the footage, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
“He bragged about the fact that he did it. He said she deserved it,” Assistant District Attorney Caitlin Connolly said in opening statements at Melo’s trial in Manhattan Supreme Court.
On Jan. 17, 2016, Melo flew into a rage when he got home after a night out and discovered the 22-year-old victim had text messages from other men, authorities said.
The couple’s relationship was “on the rocks” and the woman was thinking of moving back to the the Dominican Republic when she was shamed, the prosecutor said.
Melo allegedly berated, beat and choked the victim for hours inside their W.142nd St. apartment before he sent her — the mother of his infant daughter — out in the frigid weather wearing only a towel.
He threatened to kill her if she didn’t disrobe and go outside.
While on the street, Melo snatched the towel away and left the woman naked next to the garbage cans outside an a building.
“You’re going to pay the price like a whore, right there by the trash,” he told her on the video. “Pose with your trash.”
He was later caught “reenacting the video with friends and laughing about it,” Connolly said.
The mortifying ordeal was a “living nightmare” for the victim, who said Melo once “bit her on the cheek” because she asked him about a phone message from another woman.
Melo is charged with coercion, assault, aggravated harassment, menacing, criminal obstruction of breathing, endangering the welfare of a child and unlawful imprisonment.
The trial is expected to resume Monday with testimony from the victim.
