Unholy chaos
No stopping knife loon before mosque kid slashed
WORSHIPERS AT a Bronx mosque tried to block a bladewielding man from entering the sanctuary before he barreled into a 6-year-old boy, slashing the child across his forehead, according to surveillance video the Daily News obtained.
The unidentified man, who was being chased, slashed little Mohammed Dieye with a box cutter as he rushed into Masjid Salam on Longwood Ave. at Hewitt Place in Woodstock just after 2 p.m. Sunday, the video shows.
Mohammed had just finished a Koran class and was about to walk out of the mosque when the incident occurred, his family said.
He was taken to Lincoln Medical Center, where doctors used seven stitches to close his wound.
“I felt scared and there was so much blood,” Mohammed told The News.
His mother, Sokha Sall, 22, said she almost fainted after hearing what happened.
“I couldn't stop crying,” she said.
Wabo-Illemy Affo, 58, the Sunday School Koran teacher, said the man came into the mosque too fast for anyone to block him.
“We all panicked when we saw what happened,” he said. “Soon we realized that people were chasing him.”
The man, who was wearing his hair in dreadlocks, had a box cutter in his hand, police said. He was seeking safety inside the mosque from the group of men chasing him, police sources said.
The mosque’s imam, Mouhemed Sefou, said a police patrol car is typically parked outside the mosque on Sundays, but it wasn’t there at the time of the incident.
Yerime Dieye, 14, the victim’s cousin, said at first he didn’t realize what had happened.
“As he was running in, I noticed two other people were chasing him,” he recalled.
“I was confused what was going on,” he said. “I turned around and see my baby cousin’s screaming from pain. I just focused on my baby cousin and I couldn’t think about anything else.”
“I took off my shirt right away,” he added, “and then used it to stop the bleeding.”