A 21-year-old man was detained by NYPD officers on Friday for allegedly arbitrarily stabbing a young woman in the rear of a Chelsea subway station during an unsolicited, upsetting attack.
According to court filings, during rush hour on Tuesday, Carlos Rivera stabbed his 25-year-old victim in the side while she was descending a flight of steps at the W. 23rd St. station. Rivera did not speak to her. As she passed, Rivera, who was positioned in the center of the stairway, stabbed her. According to police, there was nobody else on the stairs at the time.
Prosecutors charged Rivera with attempted murder and assault on Friday, stating that he quietly put up his hood and left the station after the 6:30 p.m. stabbing without saying anything again.
It wasn’t until she got to the foot of the steps at the C/E platform and saw that she was bleeding from a huge gash on the left side of her body that his victim recognized she had been stabbed, according to the prosecution.
Police eventually discovered that the incision was approximately three inches deep and extended six inches from her chest to her back. The woman was treated at Bellevue Hospital after being taken there by EMS.
After a quick investigation, police located Rivera and took him into custody on Wednesday.
Rivera was chosen by his victim from a collection of photos, although she denied knowing him or ever interacting with him in the metro.
During a quick arraignment process on Thursday, a Manhattan Criminal Court judge ordered Rivera to be jailed on $60,000 bail. He has two pending cases in other boroughs, according to the prosecutors, who requested $300,000 bail: a petit larceny charge from Queens in June and a grand larceny accusation in Brooklyn in May.
According to police, a 29-year-old woman was stabbed in the arm and back during a mugging on a No. 3 train that was thundering into the Wall St. station in downtown Manhattan the day after the Chelsea incident.
At approximately 11:15 p.m., the woman’s train was pulling into the station from Brooklyn. According to police, she was robbed Wednesday by a man in his 20s wearing a white medical mask who brandished a knife.
According to police, the robber cut her while stealing her cell phone. According to police, he then sprang from the train at Wall Street and fled via the exit, where he was captured on camera as he left the station.
According to police, the woman had injuries to her back, both hands, left elbow, and left arm. She was taken to Bellevue Hospital by EMS, where she received treatment for minor wounds.
In the hopes that someone might recognize the robber, police released surveillance photos of him on Thursday. He is characterized as being Black, slender, and around 5′ 11″. According to police, he was carrying a gray bag and sporting a blue sweatshirt at the time of the incident.
According to officials, the two attacks on female straphangers in the New York City subway system occur when police reduce the number of officers on the ground from 300 to 200 for midnight patrols.
Police would send more patrols to high-crime subway hubs as part of precision policing, which would supplement the fewer patrols.
Last month, the department released a statement saying, “We’ll continue to make the subways safer by using our data-driven approach to deploy officers to the areas we know are problematic.” This will ensure that officers are on the appropriate trains, at the right stations, and at the right times.
At this time last year, there were 1,273 offenses in the subway system; as of Sunday, there were 1,246 crimes, a 2% decrease.
According to NYPD statistics, assaults on the subway have increased by 7%, from 325 at this time last year to 349.
Police are requesting that anybody with information about the attack on Wednesday contact NYPDCrime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. Every call will be kept private.
