Police Searching For 2 Suspects In Bronx Subway Slashing, Robbery
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Police are looking for two men in connection with the slashing of another man during a robbery in the Bronx.
Investigators said the 26-year-old victim was riding the southbound 2 train at 1:15 a.m. Tuesday when he was approached by two men who slashed him in the face and hand before stealing his backpack.
The victim got off the train at the Jackson Avenue station while the suspects continued riding southbound, police said.
The victim was taken to Lincoln Hospital and is expected to be OK.
The incident worried some early morning neighborhood commuters.
"It's scary because I work early mornings," one man told 1010 WINS' Samantha Liebman. "It happened so close to home, I hear about it a lot on the news, but I didn't think it would happen so close to home."
But others weren't surprised.
"Just the Bronx, in particular, it's how it is out here," said resident Sebastian Cuvillos.
Tuesday's incident is the latest in a rash of knife attacks throughout the city. Slashings and stabbings are up 21 percent this year.
"This is one of the few crimes that is going up," Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said. "At the same time it's going up at a level that is a concern to us, that's the additional effort were putting into it."
Because of the spike, the city has launched "Operation Cutting Edge" to track knife attacks as a separate category in crime statistics.
The NYPD has noticed these crimes happen most often overnight, particularly on Friday and Saturday. About 20 percent of all slashing incidents happen in the Bronx, CBS2's Magdalena Doris reported.
The city has since added more police patrols in subways, stepped up NYPD presence overnight and cracked down on clubs and after hours establishments.
But since that plan has been rolled out, these crimes have continued to pop up, including attacks on or near subways. Last Friday, there was a slashing at Penn Station and another at a A train station in lower Manhattan.
