A Mount Washington woman was convicted of voluntary manslaughter yesterday after what began as an argument with her boyfriend over a cold bagel.

Allegheny County Judge John A. Zottola issued the verdict after hearing testimony in the nonjury trial of Patrice A. Rogers, 23, who was charged with fatally stabbing her live-in boyfriend on Feb. 25.

Ms. Rogers admitted to police that she stabbed Geno Crenshaw, 30, after the couple had an argument over a bagel he'd brought her. She didn't eat it because she said it was cold, which prompted him to become upset that she was ungrateful. She said he began hitting her from behind. She stabbed him once with a backhanded motion with a kitchen knife, puncturing his heart.

Defense attorney J. Richard Narvin of the Office of Conflict Counsel argued for Ms. Rogers' acquittal, saying she plunged the knife into Mr. Crenshaw as an act of self defense. Assistant District Attorney Michael Pradines said Ms. Rogers should be convicted of third-degree murder since she inflicted a wound on a vital organ and did so with malice.

Judge Zottola said it was apparent after hearing witness accounts that Ms. Rogers and Mr. Crenshaw fought so frequently that none of her family members on the second floor of the home came downstairs when the couple began fighting that day.

The judge did not find that Ms. Rogers killed Mr. Crenshaw with malice. But he also did not believe that she was forced to stab him to defend herself because she already claimed to have immobilized him by kicking him in a previously injured ankle.

He set sentencing for Dec. 1.

Mr. Crenshaw's parents, siblings and aunts were upset by the verdict because they said the defendant gave about five different accounts of what occurred that day, though she admitted that she used soapy water to wash blood from the knife.

"She was very obsessive about him. She should have gotten third-degree murder. There was malice," said his mother, Lashell Crenshaw. "She showed no remorse."