The wife of one of the victims told the Post that the Queens man accused of stabbing four people should be locked up “forever.”
Patrick Benjamin was taking his wife, Shirley, to work in southeast Queens around 7:20 a.m. when a suspicious stabber, armed with a hunting knife, crept up behind the couple.
“We've been down that road for almost five years and nothing has happened,” Shirley, 73, said Saturday.
“So this guy goes out early in the morning and does this to people,” she said. “They have to keep him away forever.”
Jermaine Riguer, 27, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of stabbing four people in Springfield Gardens, Jamaica, on Jan. 16 and 17, authorities said.
Police said the Benjamins were walking Wednesday in front of 134-17 161st Street toward Guy R. Brewer Boulevard when a knifeman “reached out” and slashed Patrick, 74, in the stomach. It is said that
Benjamin needed surgery after the 6-inch knife “touched his colon,” his wife said.
“He was walking to work with me,” the home attendant said from her husband's bedside. “It was cold so I was wearing a hoodie. [The attacker] It came from behind us. ”
They had no warning.
“I was very surprised because I didn't hear anything,” she said. “Oh my god! We didn't even look back.”
Suddenly, my husband bent over.
“I saw my husband fall down holding his side,” she said. “He didn't know what it was. He felt a pinch. I lifted up his jacket and saw blood. I was crying, oh my god!”
The attackers disappeared as quickly as they appeared, she said.
“When I turned around, he was gone,” she said. “I couldn't see his face. He couldn't see anything.”
Another victim of the stabber said he had a face-to-face conversation with the stabber on an MTA bus.
Ryan Moore, 36, a medical assistant, was on his way to work when he asked Rigel, a stranger, if he could sit at Q111 on 115th Street.
“He was sitting by the window in the back with his book bag on the seat,” Ryan said. “I asked him if he could move my bookbag so I could sit down. He got up, took the bookbag, and said I should sit by the window.”
A few stops later, a seat became vacant and the knifeman asked Moore to move to a window seat.
Moore thought it was over, but when he got off the bus, he felt something stab into his back.
“All of a sudden, before my foot touched the stairs, he came up behind me and tried to stab me multiple times,” Moore said. “That's when I fell down. He tried to stab me in the side and the right side of my chest. The knife didn't go through the jacket, but it cut the front of the jacket.”
Moore ran to escape, but fell in front of the bus.
“Eventually he stopped trying to stab me and ran away,” Moore said. “I got up to make sure I wasn't bleeding.”
Moore told police what had happened and drove around with officers searching for her, but to no avail.
He didn't realize he had been stabbed until he got home and took off his clothes.
“There were holes in my shirt and holes in my jacket,” he said. “I have a cut on my back.”
The incident made him anxious about using public transportation.
“I didn't expect a situation like that,” he said. “I didn't know there were people who go around stabbing people.”
“I was shocked,” Moore added. “I'm so glad he got off the streets and no one else could do that.”
