Slash attack
Thugs jump janitor clearing snow
A JANITOR shoveling snow outside an East Harlem school early Wednesday was slashed in the face when three teens attacked him and his coworkers, police said.
Edward Maldonado, 43, told the Daily News he was clearing the sidewalk at Public School 102 on E. 113th St. at 3:50 a.m. with three coworkers when one of the teens asked for the time.
“‘You have the time, boss? You have the time?’ he kept asking,” Maldonado said. “So I told him . . . Oh, it’s 3:50 a.m. But I’m not looking at him . . . So he proceeds to hit me in the face.”
Maldonado, who has worked for the Education Department for 18 years, didn’t realize he’d been knifed.
“I thought he punched me,” he said, adding that his co-workers let him know his face was “gushing blood.”
“When I looked down, my whole jacket was crimson red, covered in blood,” said the father of three.
The teen yelled at him and tried to attack a co-worker. Then, a supervisor demanded the goons leave.
“One of the guys tried to go after my supervisor as well, but that’s when one of the young kids grabbed the guy that hit me, that cut me, and they took off,” he said.
Maldonado, resting at home in Long Island City, Queens, after being treated at Mt. Sinai Hospital, doesn’t know why the teen cut him.
“I was quite sure it had to be something gang-related,” said Maldonado, who received a bevy of stitches to his left cheek. “Because they didn’t ask me for money, they didn’t rob any of us or anything, it was just something random.”
A police spokesman said he could not confirm a gang link.
Arlene Maldonado recalled receiving a disturbing call from her husband in the middle of the night.
“When I heard he had been slashed, I thought the worst,” she said.
Maldonado said he’ll now be more cautious at work.
“If we ever get another snowstorm, I’m going to be a little hesitant to go out there, ”he said.