A 23-year-old man was stabbed Saturday during a brawl in the Times Square station, police said — the latest in what’s become a steady drumbeat of subway violence in New York City.
Jermaine Cloud, 22, of Queens, was arrested following the 2:30 a.m. fracas at the 42nd Street/Broadway station, the NYPD said. Cloud doesn’t have a criminal past, police sources said.
A large group that had gathered in the tunnel mezzanine area were mostly gone by the time police arrived, authorities said. When cops dispersed the stragglers, they found the two wounded men.
An unidentified 23-year-old man was stabbed in the torso and leg, while Cloud, whom police described as the “aggressor,” had a slash wound to the head which may have been self-inflicted.
Investigators recovered a knife from Cloud’s pocket and “took him into custody,” authorities said. Cloud is charged with assault, criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment, cops said.
Both men were taken to Bellevue Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, police said.
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The ugly episode happened less than a day after a city fire inspector was knifed in the back by a stranger on a subway platform Friday.
The wounded victim lamented that his fellow straphangers simply walked past him as he was being assaulted.
A day earlier, a 78-year-old man was attacked while riding a southbound 2 train in Manhattan. The elderly victim was punched multiple times in the head near the 96th Street station on the Upper West Side, cops said.
Major transit crime was up 42% this year through Oct. 23 as compared to the same time last year, NYPD data show.
Last Saturday, Gov. Hochul and Mayor Adams pledged to flood the system with more cops and install additional surveillance cameras to calm straphangers’ fears amid skyrocketing crime.
“The city is not going to fix the problem just by flooding the system with blue statues. The cops must enforce the transit rules and regulations,” fumed John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor Joseph Giacalone, a former NYPD sergeant. “None of the plan put forth by Hochul and Adams mentions enforcing and prosecuting. People are being assaulted for merely complaining against loud music, which is against the regulations.”
