Two Corrections officers were attacked in a brutal four-hour span at Rikers Island Wednesday — including one guard who was slashed by an infamous subway knifer, union officials said.
The 11-year veteran officer was sliced at the island’s Otis Bantum Correctional Center around 9:30 a.m. by reputed Crips gang member Shemar Shaw, 24, who attacked shortly after complaining about a misplaced tablet, the officer said in an exclusive interview.
“He ran up behind me and I felt like he grabbed me from the back of my head and did, like a swipe motion across my face,” said the officer, who asked to remain anonymous.
“It felt like pain, and like sandpaper going across my face,” the officer said, noting that the weapon appeared to be a sharpened piece of metal.
Shaw is being held in Rikers after he allegedly punched and knifed a 29-year-old man in February because the victim bumped him on a train passing through Rockefeller Center, cops and prosecutors said.
“Seeing how he did that…in regular society, due to the laws, he knows that, all right, if I attack an officer here, it’s not gonna really mean nothing to him,” the injured officer said of Shaw’s previous bust.
The officer was hospitalized after the attack.
“Thank God that the weapon wasn’t sharper than what it was,” he said.
About four hours later – while the jail was still on lockdown from the first attack – Bloods gang member Malik Cooke allegedly threw a burning rag at the injured officer’s replacement, according to the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association (COBA).
Around 2:50 p.m., Cooke allegedly manipulated his cell door so he could step out, light the cloth on fire and hurl it at the 48-year-old female officer, the union said.
The officer, who has been on the job since 2011, was treated for smoke inhalation, but no serious burns, according to COBA.
Cooke was in custody on a second-degree burglary charge, online records show. Cops say he violated an order of protection in East Harlem in late July.
Meanwhile, the first attacked officer said this is the fourth time an inmate assaulted him, but the first time he’d been slashed.
“I’m definitely afraid,” he said. “Because even though it’s happened to me today, this could have happened to anybody, and this also has happened to people in the past as well….Now I feel their pain more than ever.”
He pushed for city lawmakers to make a change to help keep Correction officers safe and stop violent inmates who now feel “emboldened.”
“I want this job to be safer. Hopefully some type of law [passes] where I can come back to work and feel like I can take a breath, like I can actually breathe when it comes to work,” he said. “Because right now, the anxiety every time I come to work, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
COBA President Benny Boscio condemned the burst of jail violence in a strongly worded statement.
“These unprovoked attacks by violent gang members on our correction officers, who were simply doing their jobs, are not isolated incidents,” Boscio said. “There have now been nearly 600 correction officers assaulted this past year.”
The city’s Department of Correction did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
