A man armed with a knife injured five people during a chaotic incident at Penn Station, prompting vivid recollections from one of the victims. Henry Obadiah, a 60-year-old accountant from Long Branch, N.J., described a terrifying encounter from Sunday night, recalling the “rage in his eyes” of the assailant.
Obadiah was caught off guard, as he encountered the alleged attacker, identified as 51-year-old Hector Deleon, while noticing two people arguing. “He came at me to kill me! There was anger in his eyes,” Obadiah said.
As the attack unfolded, Obadiah found himself trapped. “This crazy guy just stared at me and boxed me in! He shoved the clock in my face and I was like, ‘What the hell?'” A bystander shouted, “He’s got a knife!”
In the confusion, Obadiah didn’t even realize he had been slashed. “I thought I just got punched until I looked at my phone,” he recounted, seeing the cut on his face. “I felt like my lip was split, and I saw blood, but when I looked into my phone I saw a big cut on my face, so I ran to the cops and said I had just been attacked,” he explained.
Obadiah was one of five people who were targeted around 7 PM that evening. After indicating he could identify the assailant, he followed police along a “vast trail of blood” to a nearby New Jersey Transit stop, where he found another victim, likely in his twenties, sitting on the ground with a bloody towel on his head.
Emergency responders arrived quickly, and while Obadiah requested transport to the hospital, police were alerted to additional victims as officers ran past shouting about the attack.
Obadiah expressed frustration with the perceived decline in public safety in New York City and criticized the current administration’s approach. “Something has to be done. The city is getting worse and worse, and no one seems to care,” he said. “Assailants have more rights than victims. It’s not surprising this happened, and I don’t see that changing.” He calls for change not just for his own sake but for future potential victims.
The man suspected of the attack was reportedly hospitalized but has not yet faced charges.
