Another victim is slashed in the face as New York subway knifings continue

“WHAT are you looking at?” the victim asked a stranger who was staring on the subway. The man’s response was violent.

“WHAT are you looking at?” the victim asked the strange man on the subway who was staring at him and his friend intently.

The reaction was not what he was expecting.

The strange character was 37-year-old schizophrenic Stephen Brathwaite — and he is the latest in a disturbingly long list of people who are slashing random people on New York subways.

Brathwaite, who had been pacing up and down the train platform, threw coffee over Steve Jean Baptiste and then flicked open a knife. “Want to fight?” he said to Mr Baptise, walking right up to him and slicing open his chin, reported the New York Post.

There have been 10 similar assaults already this year. They are all unconnected but are forming an alarming increase in knife-related attacks throughout the city — where there have been 365 from the start of the year until February 1 — a 20 per cent increase.

As of Monday evening there had been seven slashings and three stabbings in the subway system, reported the Daily News, compared with three slashings and two stabbings in the same time period last year.

In the latest incident, Brathwaite followed his victim onto the train and through the carriage and cut him a second time. He was arrested at the next stop while his knife was recovered from the train.

Mr Baptise, 30, only received minor injuries.

Brathwaite, of Brooklyn, was held on $250,000 bail after he was charged with assault, menacing and weapons possession.

In unfortunate timing, the New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton gave an interview on radio insisting the subway was safe and the current outbreak was merely an “aberration”.

“This is New York and occasionally the media and police get focused on a series of incidents, and that’s what happened here,” Bratton said in the interview.

The slashings have captured public attention in New York City.

“In the subway system, the issue of concern that we have, that is the most constant concern, the more significant concern in terms of actual numbers ... is pickpocketing and theft of electronic equipment.”

However he later said New Yorkers had a “right to be concerned” and conceded there was no indication what was causing the attacks — or when they would be over.

This year a 71-year-old Brooklyn grandma was cut across the face by a stranger on January 26 while on a train in Lower Manhattan.

Natalie Lewis, 29, was slashed after she got into an argument with a man after they bumped into each other on a train platform on the same day. In that chilling attack the attacker yelled, “I’ll chop you up right on this f—— train!”

“The police aren’t here now. You’re trying to get help from the crowd. They can’t help you! I can just chop you and they can’t do nothing!” the man told Ms Lewis.

Passengers are terrified.

Every night I see a different slashing,” one woman told CBS.“It does concern me because I have to take it every day. So it’s kind of scary,” another woman said.

Another, Kyle Millionmile, said: “We’re living in fear of being slashed on the subway; something needs to happen.”

The attacks have prompted the return of unarmed volunteers dubbed the ‘Guardian Angels’ for the first time in 20 years.

The Angels stopped patrolling the subway in the 1990s after an increase in policing in the area, but have returned after the wave of knife incidents.

Curtis Sliwa, who founded the organisation, told TIME that people had told him “we need you back”.

“There’s an aggressiveness that’s taking place in the subways that hasn’t taken place for quite some time. My sense over the years is that we’re beginning to slip back.”

About 150 Guardian Angels have been taking turns patrolling dozens of subway lines since Monday.

Mr Sliwa said the volunteers are trained to physically intervene and hold them until police arrived. “It’s not a ‘see something, say something’ kind of volunteer patrol. We’re not just eyes and ears,” he said.

A comforting thought then that there is help at hand. But New York commuters will be just hoping they arrive before it’s too late.

Originally published as Another victim is slashed in the face as New York subway knifings continue