An Amazon jacket-wearing menace stabbed a Brooklyn subway rider in the eye hours — possibly permanently blinding him — in violent hours-long stretch of subway violence that also saw a woman slashed with a razor, cops said
Nedal Kifeyah – a waiter at a wedding hall who lives with his mom and brothers – was standing on the southbound platform at the Bay Ridge Avenue subway station around 4:30 a.m. when another man knifed him in the eye, according to police and one of his siblings.
His attacker, seen wearing the distinctive outerwear, fled the scene, while Kifeyah was rushed to NYU Langone Hospital—Brooklyn, where he was listed in stable condition and set to undergo surgery.
“I definitely want him caught,” the victim’s brother, Jay Kifeyah, 33, said of the attacker. “Violence is not a way to deal with anything. Even if he did anything wrong, it’s not the way to deal with it. It might not have cost him his life but it might cost him his sight right now.
“Justice must be served,” Jay Kifayeh, a nurse, said.
The motive for the violence remained unclear Thursday afternoon, and cops said the injured man was uncooperative with investigators.
“He is not a perfect kid,” Jay Kifeyah said of his brother. “He has a little bit of a troubled past. He doesn’t bother anybody. He causes more harm to himself than he causes to others. He is not a problem causer. I think it might have been random.”
Jay said the hospital called him to ask if they could operate, because his brother suffered an orbital fracture.
“I gave them permission,” he said. “I have to save his eye. He can’t see out of his left eye. His orbital needs to be repaired. We don’t know if he is gonna be able to see. I want to save his eye.”
Meanwhile, Jay said he is worried about his brother and doesn’t know how to feel after the assault.
“Why would someone just attack him?” he said. “Where are the people on the platform to protect us? They say there are supposed to be more boots on the ground. It seems like they have a reduction in staffing.
“The security has gone down but the [fare] keeps going up,” he added. “So we are not safe when we are on the train anymore. Aren’t we supposed to have the national guards? How come there was not even a transit cop that saw this and tried to stop it? Are they just looking for people not paying their fare?”
No arrests have been made in the attack.
Hours earlier, a violent straphanger slashed a woman in the face with a razor blade on board a train at the 110th Street-Central Park North station, cops said.
The victim, whose age is unclear, was riding a northbound No. 2 train when Maritza Abreu, 49, suddenly picked the blade up off the floor and cut her face, causing a deep gash, authorities said.
The victim told cops she thought Abreu – a stranger – was following her before she unleashed the sudden attack, police said.
The exact motive is unclear because that victim, too, was uncooperative with authorities, police said.
She was taken to Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital, where she was listed in stable condition, cops said.
Abreu was arrested a short time later and charged with two counts of felony assault with a weapon, causing serious physical injury or disfigurement, cops said.
She has one prior arrest for assault, stemming from a fist fight with another rider on board a Manhattan train in September 2023, police said.
Felony assaults within the city’s subway system have seen about a 5% dip so far this year, with 436 incidents reported compared to 458 during the same period last year, according to the latest NYPD data on Sunday.
