STILL OFF THE RAILS
Gal ‘beats’ kid, ma on train
The city subways are still on the fast track to mayhem.
An wave of underground crime — from robberies to stabbings — broke out in the transit system Thursday and Friday, as police revealed a sickening, unprovoked attack on a mother and child that happened last month.
Police said they are hunting for a cruel woman who pummeled a 10year-old girl and her mom onboard a Bronx train on Oct. 18 — and have released surveillance images (one at right) of the suspect.
The mother and child were standing onboard a northbound No. 5 train at the Simpson Avenue station, near Westchester Avenue, just after 4:30 p.m. when the assailant approached them and started punching both in the face and mouth, police said.
No one knows why the woman launched the attack, but she got off the train and remains at large, cops said.
The mother and daughter were taken to Jacobi Medical Center in stable condition. Both were suffering from pain in the face and mouth.
Meanwhile, the crime continued Thursday, when a fiend approached a 24-year-old man on the southbound No. 1 train platform at Rector Street in Lower Manhattan around 3:50 a.m. and punched him in the face — and then savagely bit his finger, authorities said.
The brute then snatched the victim’s cellphone and wallet before running out of the station, cops said. The victim refused medical attention.
About a half-hour later in Queens, a thief snatched a backpack from a 63-year-old man on the mezzanine of the 104th Street A train station in Ozone Park, authorities said.
When the suspect ran off with the bag, the victim followed — prompting the crook to punch him in the face, cops said.
That victim also refused medical attention, police said.
The crime got even worse on Friday, with a pair of stabbings.
The first happened at about 6 a.m., when a straphanger was cut in the stomach inside the No. 6 train station at Longwood Avenue and Southern Boulevard in The Bronx, police said.
The motive for the attack remained unclear, but the man was treated at St. Barnabas Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
A person of interest, who cops say is in his 20s, was taken into custody, with charges pending.
Then, at about 3:45 p.m., a man was slashed in the face at the busy Union Square train station at 14th Street in Manhattan.
The attack happened on the NQR train platform after a dispute, police said. The attacker fled and the victim was left in stable condition and treated at the scene.
The new spate of attacks comes as crime is up 40% this year compared with 2021.
And with lower ridership, city straphangers are also more likely to be victims of crime now than before the pandemic, data showed — even though the NYPD has blamed media coverage for ongoing “perceptions” of danger.
Subway killings are soaring, hitting the highest annual levels in 25 years and overall felony crimes were up 42% year-over-year compared with the same period, according to October data.
Random violence has plagued the system, with more than 20 instances of people shoved onto train tracks and nine homicides, which is among the highest totals the subway has seen in years.