The deranged attacker who allegedly stabbed two teenage tourists at Grand Central Terminal never should have been let out after he threatened a man in the Bronx just last month, the victim in that case said Tuesday.
Yussif Abdullahi, 46, was outraged after learning that Steven Hutcherson, 36, had been cut loose by a Bronx judge — just two weeks before he allegedly randomly knifed a 14-year-old girl and her 16-year-old sister as they enjoyed a Christmas Day meal with their family at a restaurant in the Grand Central concourse.
“They shouldn’t have let him out [of jail]. I don’t believe it,” he told The Post.
Abdullahi said his Nov. 7 run-in with Hutcherson was the most dangerous encounter he’s had since he moved to the US from Ghana in 2008.
He’d been working outside a freight truck depot in Hunts Point when he said he saw Hutcherson allegedly attacking a woman.
Hutcherson — a homeless man with a lengthy rap sheet and history of mental illness — then suddenly turned his ire on Abdullahi, yelling: “Why are you working for white people? I’m going to kill this man!”
“I’m gonna shoot you. I don’t care what kind of green card the government gave you,” Hutcherson said, according to the criminal complaint against him. “Open your mouth and say something. I will shoot you right now.”
At first, Abdullahi said he thought “maybe he’s high and going crazy.”
“I was thinking maybe he was just saying it and didn’t mean it,” he recalled.
But when Abdullahi tried to walk into the workshop where he worked, he said the unhinged man blocked his path and showed him what appeared to be a gun tucked into his wasteband.
“He pulled a gun on me and said, ‘I don’t care what kind of green card you have, I’m gonna shoot you right now!” Abdullahi recalled.
Hutcherson stormed away, sucker-punching another man just one block away less than 30 minutes later, according to the complaint.
He was arrested at a nearby gas station and cops charged him with criminal possession of a weapon, menacing, harassment and assault.
Police did not recover a gun, but found a knife on him when they arrested him, according to law enforcement sources.
Hutcherson pleaded guilty to third-degree assault, a misdemeanor, and was sentenced to conditional discharge on Dec. 12 by Judge Matthew V. Grieco, according to court records.
On Monday morning, Hutcherson allegedly became unhinged after workers at the Tartinery restaurant in the Midtown transit hub refused to serve him, shouting “I want all the white people dead” before suddenly lunging at the teens, tourist visiting from South America, cops and police sources said.
The 16-year-old girl was stabbed in the back and her younger sister was stabbed in the thigh. Both were hospitalized for minor injuries.
Abdullahi was shocked that Hutcherson was allowed to go free, and not surprised he would go on to be arrested in another violent incident.
“I’m so disappointed in the cops. When he was threatening me, he told me, ‘The cops don’t do s–t! They don’t do s–t!’ And what he said was true. The cops didn’t do anything,” Abdullahi said.
“The things he was saying, telling me, ‘Why are you working for white people?’ … Maybe he was sick. He needs to be institutionalized.”
It wasn’t clear if or how Hutcherson’s Monday arrest would affect his sentence in the Bronx case. His Legal Aid attorney in the case did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Hutcherson was awaiting arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court Tuesday evening on felony charges of attempted murder, assault, criminal possession of a weapon and misdemeanor endangering the welfare of a child.
He has 17 prior arrests on his rap sheet, law enforcement sources said. He also has been classified as an “emotionally disturbed person” in prior brushes with police, according to the sources.
In the last few months alone, he was picked up for multiple weapon possession charges and was reported for erratic behavior — including storming into a Bronx stationhouse and acting belligerent, according to the sources.
The teen girls he is now accused of stabbing were visiting from Paraguay, Paraguay Consulate General in the US Carlos Alberto Ortiz confirmed to ABC, claiming that Hutcherson had “psychiatric problems.”
