What is going on underground? Three people have been slashed on the New York City subway system in the past 48 hours, two of them last night. At around 9:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Atlantic Avenue stop on the 3 train, a 29-year-old woman was assaulted by a man who threatened to “chop her up” and slashed her hand before fleeing. Eight minutes later, a man on the 6 platform at 116th Street was cut across the face. These two slashings came after Monday’s similar assault on a 71-year-old Brooklyn grandma.
In an act of grandparental solidarity, on Wednesday morning, a suspect in Monday’s attack was turned in by his girlfriend’s own grandmother*. She’d seen surveillance footage of a young man fleeing the scene and tripping over the turnstile, called the cops on her 21-year-old grandson, and kicked him out of her home. The suspects from the more recent slashings, at Atlantic Avenue and in Harlem, are still at large.
Police say that slashings and stabbings are up almost 15 percent this year. There have been 273 incidents so far in January 2016, up from 238 in the same period last year. There have also been 12 of these unsolved slash attacks since October — 11, if the suspect turned in today turns out to be guilty. (There’s an alarmingly full list at the Daily News.)
*Note: The details of this relationship have been corrected.
