Whacked in head with hammer at train station

A subway rider headed to work and waiting at a Manhattan subway station was bashed in the head with a hammer in an alarming — and unprovoked — attack by a burly masked stranger, police said Tuesday.

Engineer Patrick Osborne, 45, was standing on the downtown platform awaiting an A train at the 175th St. station in Washington Heights about 11 a.m. on Sunday, cops said. He was headed to his Midtown office to pick up mail and do some work, authorities said.

But as he craned his neck to look down the tunnel for a train, his crazed attacker crept up behind him and slammed him in the head with the hammer, he recalled.

“I hear him say something about ‘to bust some head’ but I’m not paying him mind, like ... [I’m] thinking he’s on the phone with somebody,” Osborne told the Daily News.

“He must have circled around me and hit me in the back of the head. When I feel it, I think someone hit me with their hand but it’s no fricking hand — it’s a hammer.”

Osborne said the hulking assailant came out of nowhere.

“So when I turn around I’m thinking did he make a mistake of identity or something?” he recounted. “That’s the first thing that goes through my brain and I try to defend myself.”

But the relentless attacker swung again, Osborne said. “He was coming at me again and after I see he [has] a hammer I start running, [I] tried to run,” he said. “Then I fell down and hurt both my knees. There was people around but I was running for my life and no one stepped in when I fell.”

Osborne, blood oozing from the back of his head, said he scrambled to his feet and ran upstairs to the station booth and told the clerk to call 911.

“He told me to go back downstairs to try to take a picture of the guy that assaulted me, but I’m telling myself this guy [the attacker] isn’t right in the head — I’m not going to try taking a picture,” Osborne said.

The hammer-swinging suspect ran off. “This guy looked normal,” Osborne marveled. “I always pay attention to my surroundings and I think maybe a young person doing that crazy stuff, but this wasn’t a young person. He looked normal to me. He puzzles me.”

Osborne was treated in an ambulance at the scene. He said he declined initially to go to a hospital because of COVID-19, but later relented.

“I ended up going to the emergency room though in the end because everyone [was] pressuring me to go,” he said. “They took X-rays and everything. Now I’m just in pain in my head and knees.”

“[I] can’t walk up the stairs now, it takes me time,” he said. “When I sit down, when I stand up, I get pain.”

Osborne said he’s got no choice but to return to work, but is nervous about using the subway to get there. He said he’ll drive when his knee pain subsides.

Cops asked the public’s help tracking the suspect down. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.