SLASHER ON THE RuN
WHILE COPS were hunting for an ex-con in connection with a murder at a Manhattan homeless shelter, he nearly killed again.
William Smith, 53, was still on the loose hours after stabbing a livery driver in the neck in Queens around 12:30 a.m. Saturday. Cops had been looking to question Smith after a 55-year-old man was killed at the Bellevue Men’s Shelter in Kips Bay on Friday.
Manuel Vera, the cabbie attacked during a robbery outside a Holiday Inn in Corona, knows he’s lucky to be alive. The unhinged man he picked up on Roosevelt Ave. near 103rd St sliced him in the neck just inches from his jugular vein.
“It’s really scary. . . he could have killed me,” Vera, 43, told the Daily News outside Elmhurst Hospital. “When I say ‘$10,’ he takes out a knife. I said ‘Take it easy. . .take it easy.’ He said, ‘Give me your f---ing money.”
Vera was dropping Smith off outside the hotel near the Horace Harding Expressway and Van Cleef St. He asked for the $10 fare when Smith put the blade to his neck.
“This guy was crazy,” a visibly shaken Vera said, sporting a jagged, blood-crusted cut down the side of his neck. “He was slicing all over the place."
Vera was also cut on the back as he tried to fight off his attacker. It took nine stitches to close the neck wound.
Smith got out of the cab with Vera’s money, but suddenly tried to get back into the cab as his victim dialed 911 on his cell phone.
“I locked the door,” Vera said. “That saved my life.”
Smith ran off, leaving in the cab his wallet and cell phone which he apparently dropped in the struggle with Vera, police sources said. Cops found Smith’s ID in the wallet.
The bloody assault was nearly a full day after Marcus Guerreiro was found dead — his throat slit and a wire wrapped around his neck — inside the shelter on E. 30th St., cops said.
A security guard found Guerreiro in his blood-soaked bed on the third floor of the shelter about 8:20 a.m. Friday, sources said. Guerreiro had a deep gash to his throat, cops said.
Shelter residents saw someone washing blood off his hands in the bathroom, police sources said. Bloody sheets and clothes were also found in the bathroom garbage can.
Smith had stayed at the shelter, but never returned after the slaying. It was not immediately disclosed how long he had been living there.
He’s been arrested a dozen times since 1982, but for nothing violent, police sources said.
Smith was paroled from Ulster Correctional Facility in February 2015 after serving nine months in prison for burglary, according to court records. His parole was expected to end in September of this year.
Cops conducted a massive manhunt for Smith on Saturday utilizing police dogs to try and pick up his scent.
Guerreiro’s killing comes amid a series of violent attacks at city homeless shelters, including the near decapitation of former city teacher and librarian Deven Black. He was murdered in January at the Boulevard Homeless Shelter in Harlem.
Mayor de Blasio tasked the NYPD with training Department of Homeless Services security staff, but the instruction has yet to take place, officials said.