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Passengers on board a New York subway carriage were subjected to a brutal and unprovoked knife assault in broad daylight. The shocking incident was caught on video, and comes amid a crime surge in the Big Apple.

In the grisly footage, the suspect viciously attacked two men, knocking both to the floor of the carriage and slashing as they tried to fight back. One victim managed to get to his feet and drive the attacker away, but had a knife thrust into his torso in the scuffle.

WARNING: DISTURBING VIDEO

Guess it’s no longer safe to ride the subway in NYC and I’m not referring to COVID… pic.twitter.com/wMdEDtUt4R

Local news reports suggest the incident took place last Sunday, and as the video spread around the internet on Saturday, NYPD Transit Chief Edward Delatorre explained that the suspect was “arrested moments later, charged with multiple counts of felony assault, menacing, and criminal possession of a weapon, and is currently awaiting prosecution.” 

According to Delatorre, the stabbing was a “heinous and unprovoked attack.” Both victims were taken to hospital with non-critical injuries, the New York Daily News reported.

The NYPD has recently announced its crime statistics for the month before. The stats made for grim reading, describing a surge of 130 percent in shootings in every borough of New York, a 30 percent increase in murders, and a doubling in burglaries, compared to June 2019.

NYPD Chief Dermot Shea blamed “budget cuts, changes to the criminal justice system that are impacting the courts and the continuing international health pandemic” for the spike in crime. In addition to slashing the force’s budget by a billion dollars, Mayor Bill de Blasio has taken 600 plainclothes officers off the streets. 

These officers had been credited with taking guns out of the hands of criminals, yet were implicated in nearly a third of all officer-involved shootings in the city, and were accused of discriminatory racial profiling.

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