She is charged with attempted murder. Her attorney says she acted in self-defense.

Christine Fils-Aimé stabbed a man on the night of May 2 at her North Bethesda apartment.

She acknowledged that to police after they followed a trail of blood to her eighth floor apartment at the Pike & Rose development, according to charging documents and her lawyer. In a sink in her home, police found an eight-inch knife that appeared to have blood on it.

Fils-Aimé, 30, a single mother of a teenage son who works as a hairstylist, was arrested and charged with attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault and reckless endangerment. A Montgomery County District Court judge denied her bond on May 4. She’s being held at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility.

Fils-Aimé’s attorney, Michael Stark, said she doesn’t belong there because she acted in self-defense after Clinton Gibson, 46, whom she had dated for about six weeks, attacked her. Stark said Gibson punched her between the eyes, pulled out her hair and lifted her by her neck until she passed out.

According to the charging documents, Fils-Aimé told officers she acted in self-defense.

Stark, who said Fils-Aimé doesn’t have a criminal record, said police apparently failed to collect locks of his client’s hair as evidence.

“She didn’t pull them out herself,” he said.

Gibson denied Stark’s allegations against him.

“All of that is untrue,” Gibson said Thursday afternoon in a phone conversation with The Banner, adding that any additional comment would come from his attorney. The Banner has not been able to reach his attorney.

A spokesperson for the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office declined to comment Thursday. Police did not respond to a question from The Banner about Fils-Aimé’s claim of self-defense and whether she had been examined for evidence of assault.

In a motion filed this week, Stark requested a second bond hearing for Fils-Aimé, arguing she was the victim in the case.

“What was she supposed to do?” Stark asked The Banner. “Was she supposed to just sit there and die or be assaulted?”

‘Stabbed in the heart’

Shortly before police officers went to Fils-Aimé’s apartment on the night of the incident, Gibson approached a Montgomery County Police cruiser and struck its driver’s side with his open palm to get the attention of the officer inside.

His white shirt was soaked in blood and he said he had been “stabbed in the heart,” according to court records.

With the help of a civilian, the officer applied pressure to the chest wound using a jacket and gauze, and repeatedly asked who had stabbed him and where he had come from. Gibson did not say.

A woman told the officer she had seen the bloodied man exit an apartment elevator. When officers arrived on the eighth floor, according to a court document, Fils-Aimé left her apartment and told them in a hallway: “It was self-defense.”

Officers found Fils-Aimé’s living room spattered with blood, according to the records, and soil from a plant’s broken pot covered some of the floor. An officer saw the stacked washer and dryer units were running and stopped them to protect potential evidence.

At another point, an officer heard Fils-Aimé shout that she had stabbed Gibson, and she demanded that she be taken to jail, court records said.