A man was stabbed during a brutal brawl on a Manhattan subway early Sunday morning, sources said.
The 34-year-old victim was riding the E train southbound in Midtown when he was violently stabbed in the back, law enforcement sources told the Post.
The two had known each other for some time. It is unclear what started the fight.
As the train slowed to a stop at Route 53 and Lexington, the gunman fled the scene with two friends and jumped on a train bound for Queens.
The victim was taken to the hospital and is said to be in stable condition.
A pool of blood left on an E-Train car revealed the brutal nature of the morning attack, which forced the MTA to suspend train service.
Police were searching for the subway stabber Sunday night.
Just hours after that attack, another man was stabbed and beaten in Brooklyn.
The 22-year-old was the victim of a violent crime just before 8 a.m. and hopped on an A train bound for nearby East New York to report the incident. His condition was unknown.
The two incidents come as subway safety has become a controversial issue for Mayor Eric Adams, who just weeks ago said there were no firearms on strap hangers inside a subway station. There was a lot of fuss about new scanning technology.
“This is our Sputnik moment,” Mayor Eric Adams said proudly as he unveiled a freestanding scanner made by weapons detection company Evolve.
“Just like Kennedy said we’re going to put a man on the moon… let’s put in a scanner.”
The scanners were introduced in response to a wave of underground violence that hit New York’s subways.
The number of felonies on transit increased by 53% last year compared to before the pandemic, with 570 crimes in 2023 compared to 373 in 2019, according to the latest data from the NYPD.
However, crime across the transit system fell 23.5% in March, and the NYPD attributed the decline to an additional 1,000 uniformed officers patrolling the network each day.
An additional 800 NYPD officers were recently deployed as part of an effort to crack down on fare evasion.
“There can be no sense of misconduct on the subway, and it starts at the turnstiles,” Police Commissioner Edward Cavern said in a statement this week.
