The Good Samaritan who was stabbed while coming to the aid of a woman at a Bronx subway station this week is a Marine Corps veteran who urged city officials to do something about crime — and “if not, the vigilantes will come out,” he said Friday.
Alfredo Troche, 53 told The Post that when he saw two men threatening a woman with a box cutter at the Pelham Parkway Nos. 2 and 5 train station in Allerton around 12:50 a.m. Thursday, his military training compelled him to step in.
Troche – who on Friday wore a leather motorcycle vest with a Batman logo on the back and a Batman patch – said he was returning to the Bronx after visiting his dad in Williamsburg, Brooklyn when he walked right into the startling scene.
“I was coming up the steps on Pelham Parkway and I see a lady screaming, it could be my grandmother,” Troche said as he stood in front of Full Moon Pizza on Arthur Avenue in the Little Italy section of the Bronx, near his home. “I see two shadows, I see a box cutter, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, I get the adrenaline, Marine Corps.’ They were going to assault the lady. It could have been my grandmother, it could have been you, it could have been him, your mother.”
“She was screaming,” said Troche who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and said his “code name” is Batman.
“I jump into action, punching, kicking, kicking the teeth. Martial artist.”
Troche – who was born in Puerto Rico, grew up in Brooklyn and had been living in the Bronx for six years – was stabbed in the hand, the inner elbow and on the leg during the scuffle, he said.
Troche said he called the police in the moments after the attack.
“They didn’t come, so I kept on going and I fell down in the Bronx Zoo, [and] at a bus stop I called the ambulance,” he said.
He was taken to Montefiore Medical Center, where he was listed in stable condition, but said he remained there for eight hours.
The elderly woman, meanwhile, reached out to Troche in the aftermath of the terrifying encounter, and told him, “Thank you for your service,” he said.
Troche – who is currently doing odd jobs around the neighborhood and trying to get his disability benefits due to a back injury – said he is pleased with the new move to surge National Guard troops into the city’s subway system, but thinks the Guardsmen should cover more ground.
“All five boroughs, not only Manhattan, everywhere,” Troche said. “You need to deploy, not only in Times Square, all five boroughs.”
“The point is, they need to deploy,” he added. “Tell the mayor to deploy. The governor too. If not, the vigilantes will come out. If they don’t do nothing, we’re going to do something. I’m tired. We’re on the street, we’re going to work, going to school…when is it going to stop?”
“The point is, we have to protect our society,” the veteran said.
Troche – who was born in Puerto Rico, grew up in Brooklyn and had been living in the Bronx for six years – said he thinks crime is now a bigger concern than in the past, and slammed the state bail reform laws enacted in 2020.
“It’s never been like this,” he said. “You tell the DA, if you get locked up for a violent crime, no bail.”
No arrests had been made in connection to the stabbing by Friday afternoon, the NYPD said.
