Kari Bazemore, the man arrested and accused of slashing 24-year-old Amanda Morris’s face in Chelsea on Wednesday morning, has been identified as the culprit in a similar incident that took place on New Year’s Day. Nicole Pagliaro, a 28-year-old graphic designer, was attacked on January 1 near Bruckner Boulevard in Port Morris. “He stopped me and said, ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you,’ and then slashed my face,” she told DNAinfo. When she heard about the attack on Morris this week, she recognized the culprit’s mannerisms.
“After reading this story from the Chelsea slashing, the way that he approached her, the way that he held the knife was exactly the same as my story,” she said. NYPD chief of detectives Robert Boyce confirmed that Bazemore is a suspect in Pagliaro’s case, telling CBS reporters that he “took a razor blade and cut another young lady’s face near Bruckner Boulevard.”
Bazemore has 32 previous offenses, including an arrest two days before Pagliaro was attacked for punching a woman on Sixth Avenue. He was arrested Thursday when a pedestrian recognized him from surveillance video of his attack on Morris and tipped off police.
Boyce told ABC that Bazemore has no official record of mental illness, but his family members say he does. “If you could see his actions prior to both instances, you could see a man clearly in emotional distress,” Boyce said. Bazemore is charged with felony assault and criminal possession of a weapon.
