Vic tells of stabbing horror on subway
Cops zapped a knife-wielding straphanger with a stun gun to end a wild chase through lower Manhattan after the suspect stabbed two men following a fight over a subway seat, cops said Wednesday.
Ronald Cundiff, 40, fled from a downtown A train at around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday after plunging his blade into a fellow rider.
“You gonna tase me?” Cundiff asked police before they did just that, and placed him under arrest. Sources told the Daily News the suspect had 25 prior arrests, although the details of his criminal history remained unclear.
The bloody dispute began when Steve Williams, 55, asked Cundiff to move his bag from a seat so he could sit.
Williams, a construction worker and handyman, on Wednesday told The News that he was on his way from the Bronx to Jersey City to hang a door for a customer. At 34th St., he gave his seat to a woman carting luggage.
“I always like to give up my seat to women, children and the elderly,” Williams said. “I gave my seat to a young lady … I felt sorry for her. She had so much luggage.”
Williams explained that he has diabetes and had had surgery on his foot, so he wanted to find another seat. He said a man was occupying three seats — one for himself and one on either side for a backpack and a grocery bag.
“Two or three people had come onto the train and asked him for a seat but he refused. I asked him but he didn’t answer. So I said I would hold his bag until I got off at my stop,” Williams said.
“I lifted his bag, and he grabbed me around the throat. I grabbed him back by his shirt. Then he pulled his knife and stabbed at me four times. He hit me once in the side. I backed away and someone said, ‘You’re bleeding.’”
Williams, who is married with two sons and two grandkids, said, “I backed away from him. He got off at Fulton St. and I followed him. I saw an officer come out of a store. He saw I was bleeding and offered to take care of me and said he’d send other officers to get the guy.”
Cundiff made it about a mile to Bowery and Canal St., where cops spotted him.
Nicholas Cai, 21, who was standing nearby, saw the officers start chasing after Cundiff, and he sprang into action.
“I tried to hold him, stop him,” Cai told the News. That’s when Cundiff knifed the good Samaritan, cutting his shoulder.
“Yes, it was more of a slice. He cut me in the left shoulder,” he said.
The suspect, still waving the knife as he ran, began threatening everyone in his path until cops took him into custody after a brief struggle. A second good Samaritan scuffled with Cundiff before two cops tasered the suspect.
“They told me in the ambulance that he’d been caught. They did a good job,” Williams said.
Cundiff’s arraignment was pending Wednesday in Manhattan Criminal Court.
“He needs to be off the street,” Williams said of Cundiff. “He’s dangerous.”