The woman has been identified as 41-year-old Mauvette Daley Mattadeen. She was being held on $500,000 bail and was ordered to have no contact with her husband, according to Bennett.

Mattadeen, a Jamaican national, also has been ordered to surrender her passport, authorities said.

The victim in the case, identified by family members as 52-year-old township resident Leacroft Mattadeen, remained hospitalised with severe burns to his face and upper torso.

Mauvette Mattadeen is charged with first-degree attempted murder and a pair of third-degree weapons offenses.

She is accused of spraying her husband in the face with an unknown chemical while he slept Friday morning, throwing a pot of scalding cooking oil on him while he tried to wash his eyes out in the shower and subsequently attacking him with a hatchet, according to investigators.

The victim Leacroft Mattadeen, is a taxi driver working in Manhattan who moved to Somerset County in 2003 and had been married to his alleged attacker for about three years. He reportedly filed for divorce less than a month ago.

He was able to disarm his wife, run from their apartment and seek assistance after she was heard exclaiming that “if she could not have him, no one else would,” according to an affidavit filed Tuesday in Superior Court.

“Our family is horrified about this tragic event,” the victim’s sister, Marguerite Mattadeen-Lee of the Somerset section of Franklin said earlier this week.

Several family members agreed this week that the attack came as a shock, describing the victim as a caring, friendly person with a good heart.

Leacroft Mattadeen was scheduled to undergo surgery sometime this week, when those close to him were concerned that he might have been permanently blinded in at least one eye by the attack.