Ahuva Katzin said her childhood classmate, Miriam Yarimi, was an insecure teen from a religious family who was "screwed up" by a teen affair with a married NYPD cop.

Miriam Yarimi, 35, wearing a yellow hospital gown with her hair neatly cut, was arraigned on manslaughter charges by webcam from her hospital bed and was ordered held without bail five days after the deadly crash.

"At first, I thought, 'This is great. She's so nice,' " next-door neighbor Angie Strutska said of the suspect when the single mom moved in to the building about a year and a half ago. "But then I started seeing things weren't so good. All the time she thinks someone is spying on her."

Former New York Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner and wife Jessica paid tribute to their son Miller in a touching obituary, saying that his smile "brought joy to all," after the 14-year-old died suddenly on vacation in Costa Rica.

Miriam Yarimi had been recently ranting that she was being pursued by the CIA, too -- and is now in Bellevue Hospital's prison ward undergoing a psych evaluation before her arraignment, sources said.

The decision to officially clear the Iowan of wrongdoing means the Pitt student's disappearance on March 6 while on spring break in the Dominican Republic remains a mystery.