A Brooklyn straphanger who had his face randomly sliced open by a stranger on his way to work is angry to be yet another random victim on the rails.
Earlton Massenburg Jr. recounted the horror to The Post, recalling how he’d only nodded off for a few minutes last Sunday when he was jolted awake by the searing pain of his face being sliced open.
“When I opened my eyes, I saw this dude and he had something sharp in his hand and it was like he had just finished cutting me,” Massenburg, 31, said of the bloody 9 a.m. ambush on a 4 train on his way to work on Staten Island as an Amazon deliveryman.
“I wasn’t freaking out, I wasn’t panicking — I was angry,” he said. “I think that’s crazy considering we have more cameras and police around and all of that.”
As he opened his eyes, he caught a glimpse of his attacker bolting from the train at the Crown Heights-Utica Avenue station.
“It was so quick but I did see that he was holding something sharp — it had to be like a razor or something,” he recalled.
He didn’t realize how badly he was injured until after he alerted cops, and opened the camera on his phone to take a look at his face.
The gash stretches from his hairline, across his right cheek, to his lip. He couldn’t count all the stitches when asked by The Post.
“It’s pretty much all across my cheek in a horizontal line. Like, the whole cheek.”
Felony assaults like Massenburg’s are down 6% in transit in the first two months of this year — from 117 to 101.
But they are up 8%, from 95 to 103, compared to 2023, and have climbed a staggering 56% — 66 to 103 — compared to the same period in 2019, according to NYPD data.
And misdemeanor assaults — which have less severe injuries but can still include being punched, pushed or kicked — are up 7%, from 274 to 293, systemwide so far this year. In one misdemeanor assault, a man was punched after an innocent knee bump on a Manhattan bound train during the morning commute in November.
Massenburg’s terrifying attack was one of several since Feb. 10, when two straphangers were slashed in separate incidents in Manhattan and Brooklyn, cops said. Another straphanger was randomly punched and slashed on a train near the Jamaica Center stop around 3:15 p.m. Feb. 16 in Queens.
A 38-year-old man was beaten and robbed in the system Wednesday, when a mob of six thieves accosted him on the mezzanine of the of the Canal Street N/Q/R station, then made off with his wallet at 4:30 a.m.
Just hours earlier, a 32-year-old man had been standing on the J train platform at Fulton Street-Alabama Avenue in Brownsville when a stranger he accidentally bumped into lashed out and started swinging a “sharp object,” cutting the victim on his head and finger, cops said.
In response to high profile crimes, including a woman who was fatally set ablaze on an idling F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch flooded the system with cops, and created quality-of-life patrols to crack down on minor infractions too.
So far the patrols are being done in Queens, but the NYPD plans to expand them citywide. Overall crime in the subways is down 27% so far this year, police data show.
Massenburg’s attacker remains on the loose.
He went back to work the next day and continues to make the two-hour commute.
“I’m still pretty angry at it, but I can’t just only have that on my mind,” he said. “I have a lot of other things to deal with and do.”
