The Columbia University grad student stabbed to death near the Manhattan campus late Thursday was a soccer-loving Italian who came to the US eight years ago for school and loved living in New York, pals say. Davide Giri, 30, was knifed in the stomach in a random attack as he walked back to his Morningside Heights apartment after soccer practice with his team, NY International FC, NYPD sources and friends told The Post on Friday.

Shocked neighbors and friends said Giri loved living in New York and described him as a soft-spoken, “gifted student” who was known back home especially for his charity work with his local church. “I’m devastated,” his longtime friend Cesare Mercurio, 31, told The Post. “I can’t make sense of the act itself; it gives me anger.” “He was probably the warmest person I’ve ever met in my life. He had this way of making you forget bad things. He was smart and academically ambitious,” he said.