Subway slash vics help bust suspect
Two UPS workers slashed during a squabble on a Manhattan subway train early Tuesday were able to grab their attacker and hold him until cops got there, police said.
The 42-year-old victims got into an argument with Finn Barbuto, 22, on a downtown N train at Lexington Avenue and 59th Street at about 4:45 a.m., authorities said.
Barbuto slashed both men on the hands and arms during the attack, which began on the train and spilled out onto the platform, cops said.
One of the victims told The Post he was fending off the assailant when his colleague stepped in.
The attacker “stabbed me in the back but my man Perez, he knew what to do,” Dan Baker said of co-worker Albert Perez.
“He took his jacket off and threw it on his [the suspect’s] head and I rushed the knife.”
After a short struggle, Baker and Perez managed to hold the slasher at the station and a bystander called 911, according to police sources.
Barbuto, of Yonkers, was charged with two counts of assault and criminal possession of a weapon and was taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.
The victims were taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
Police sources told The Post a 911 caller reported a “homeless man was poking at people with a knife.” Cops could not immediately confirm the suspect was homeless.
An MTA employee just coming on duty at the time of the slashings said she didn’t see the attack but heard about the incident, and added there was “blood down there.”
“I called my family right away to let them know I’m OK before they see it in the news,” the worker said, noting that homeless people are often “hanging out around the utility room” used by employees.
The incident is the latest in a series of attacks in the subway system. Angela Lee, 50, a home attendant who lives in Brooklyn and takes the R train into Manhattan for work, said she doesn’t feel safe.
“I use this station to transfer,” she said. “I’m really afraid but I have no choice but to take the train.”
An elderly man walking with a cane at the station agreed.
“I’ve noticed a lot more slashings and cuttings on the trains and especially in the stations since the coronavirus,” he said. “And you have to ask yourself what’s happening. It’s a thing that makes you ponder, ‘What the hell’s going on?’ ”
A woman, 54, who gave her name only as Josephine P. and who takes the train at that station to her job as a home health aide in Queens, said straphangers “have to be aware of who is beside them all the time.
“I’m always alert,” she said. She lamented the revolving door of the criminal-justice system.
“Even though [attackers] are sick, when they go to court, [judges] just let them out and they do the same thing again,” she said.
The NYPD has said it is beefing up the presence of uniformed cops patrolling the system.
“Continuing attacks in the subway system, while isolated and sporadic, are outrageous and unacceptable,” said NYC Transit Interim President Sarah Feinberg. “Every customer and each of our brave, heroic transit workers deserve a safe and secure transit system.
“We continue to call on the city to surge mental-health services into the subways — and while we appreciate the hundreds of NYPD officers that have been added to the system in recent weeks, we continue to believe more are needed as the city reopens and we welcome riders back.”