A young Minnesota couple’s late-night argument turned deadly in the early hours of Monday morning, leaving 25-year-old Quinton McKay Hughes dying on the floor of his girlfriend’s St. Cloud apartment and 23-year-old Katerina Ivanovna Markiv facing a second-degree murder charge.
The trouble began around 4 a.m., when Hughes made a frantic 911 call reporting that he had been stabbed “by accident” after what he described as a “minor disagreement.” Dispatchers noted that Hughes was coughing, struggling to breathe, and fading quickly. Moments later, Markiv grabbed the phone, telling operators the wound was “at his left [expletive] nipple” as she apologized repeatedly in the background.
When officers arrived at the unit on Washington Memorial Drive, they found Hughes unresponsive, lying in a substantial pool of blood. First responders performed CPR, but Hughes was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to a probable cause affidavit, Markiv admitted the couple had been drinking and that she had wanted to “have fun,” meaning sex, but Hughes did not. That rejection, she said, led to what she called a “stupid [expletive] argument” that she “kinda [expletive] made up in her head.”
Markiv told police she became annoyed when Hughes “kept cutting her off” as she tried to speak. Holding a knife at the time, she swung it toward him, thinking she’d simply “scratch” him. Instead, she said something “triggered” inside her. “My [expletive]hand just went forward and it [expletive] shanked him,” she reportedly told detectives. “I’m like, what the hell just happened?”
She insisted she did not mean to kill Hughes and claimed she immediately applied pressure to the wound while urging him to call 911.
But investigators also interviewed co-workers of both the suspect and the victim, and their comments added a darker dimension. One described Markiv as someone who could become “upset and very unhappy.” Another co-worker told police that just last week, Markiv had openly said she “gets so crazy to the point she will kill somebody.”
Markiv remains in the Stearns County Jail awaiting her next court appearance on Monday.
