A man was stabbed during a brutal brawl on a Manhattan subway in the early hours of Sunday morning, sources said.
The 34-year-old victim had been traveling on a southbound E-train through midtown when he was viciously stabbed in the back, law enforcement sources told the Post.
The two individuals previously knew each other. It was unclear what started the fight.
As the train slowed to a stop at 53rd and Lexington, the attacker fled the scene with two friends and hopped onto a Queens-bound train.
The victim was taken to hospital and was listed in stable condition.
Pools of blood left behind in the E-train carriage laid bare the brutal nature of the morning attack, forcing the MTA to put the train out of service.
Cops were searching for the subway stabber on Sunday night.
Just hours after that attack, another man was stabbed and punched in Brooklyn.
The 22-year-old was the victim of the violent crime just before 8 a.m. and jumped on a nearby A-train to East New York to report the incident. His condition was unknown.
The two incidents come as subway safety has become a contentious issue for Mayor Eric Adams who just weeks ago crowed about new technology that’ll scan straphangers for firearms in subway stations.
“This is our Sputnik moment,” Mayor Eric Adams boasted as he unveiled a freestanding scanner manufactured by weapons detection company, Evolv.
“Like when Kennedy said we’re going to put a man on the moon … Let’s bring on the scanners.”
The scanners were introduced in response to a wave of underground violence hitting New York subways.
The number of felony assaults in the transit system jumped 53% last year from pre-pandemic times, with 570 such attacks in 2023 compared to 373 in 2019, the latest NYPD data show.
However, overall crime in the transit system dropped by 23.5% in March with the NYPD attributing the drop to the 1,000 additional uniformed cops patrolling the network daily.
An additional 800 NYPD officers were also recently deployed as part of an initiative to enforce fare evasion.
“There cannot be a sense of lawlessness in the subway system, and it begins at the turnstiles,” Police Commissioner Edward Caban said in a statement this week.
