Friends and neighbors of the 65-year-old Bronx woman who allegedly repeatedly stabbed her 7-year-old granddaughter said they can’t make sense of how the seemingly doting grandmother could have committed such a brutal attack.

Maritza Yauger would pamper the youngster at the local beauty parlor, showed her off on the block and spoiled her with sweets when the girl visited from her home in New Jersey, locals told The Post on Wednesday.

“She adored that girl,” said Eva Devers, 66, a longtime friend of Yauger’s, adding that after hearing the news, “I said, ‘it can’t be!'”

“She loved that girl,” Devers said through tears. “She loved her very much.”

Yauger, a native of the Dominican Republic, was under psychiatric observation at a hospital after allegedly stabbing the youngster multiple times inside her Morrisania apartment on Tuesday, police said.

Maria Castillo, a hairdresser at the local beauty salon, said Yauger periodically brought her granddaughter in to get pampered, paying for her to have her hair and nails done.

“She worshipped her granddaughter,” Castillo, 47, said. “When she brings the granddaughter I said, ‘Why you give her everything?’ She says, ‘I have two sons. I have no daughter. I loved my granddaughter. I give her everything.'”

Other locals recalled seeing the two walking Yauger’s dog down the street.

The sweet granny would even bring workers at the neighborhood grocery store “arepas,” a cornmeal and coconut cake popular in the Dominican Republic.

Stephanie Hernandez, a clerk at the store, said Yauger seemed like “a typical old grandma.”

But locals also said something changed in Yauger after her own mother died about a year ago, making her more withdrawn — and they all noticed it.

“When her mom died she got, you know, like, different,” said neighborhood grocery store worker Victor Ramirez. “Since then she wasn’t the same person. She was depressed, sad.”

Castillo, the hairdresser said Yauger became “more quiet” and “looked different.”

“She would laugh more before,” she said. “When her mother passed away she changed.”

Police have yet to reveal why Yauger allegedly turned on her young granddaughter around 8 a.m. and stabbed her in the neck, stomach and back with an unknown object — leaving the girl in a pool of blood and in critical condition at Lincoln Hospital.

Yauger, who also remains hospitalized, is charged with attempted murder, attempted assault, assault, reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child.  

“It’s been very scary and I have been praying for that child,” Bronx neighbor Ana Martinez said Wednesday. “Since yesterday we’ve been praying.”

Additional reporting by Larry Celona