A career criminal was busted in a pair of subway slashings in Manhattan and the Bronx just hours after police ended a citywide manhunt for a serial stabber.
The 27-year-old suspect, who has not yet been identified, was nabbed at the Bedford Park station in the Bronx on Thursday morning and charged with the two transit attacks, NYPD officials said at a briefing.
In the first assault, the suspect stabbed a 42-year-old man in the right shoulder around 6 a.m. Wednesday while on a Manhattan D train at 59th Street and Columbus Circle, NYPD Transit Bureau Chief Michael Kemper told reporters Thursday.
Around 7:30 a.m., a 19-year-old man in the arm aboard a 2 train at East 174th Street in the Bronx, Kemper said.
“Quickly after both these incidents occurred we learned and we realized that they were linked and they were connected, and the same individual was responsible for both,” the chief said.
At 7:20 a.m. Thursday, cops who were deployed to the Bedford Park station in the Bronx heard a “commotion” on the southbound platform and ran to the scene, Kemper said.
“As they were approaching the platform they saw a male run away from them,” he said. “They chased this male through the station, successfully apprehended him, put him in custody and it’s the individual responsible for the two stabbings yesterday.
“He’s wearing the same clothing and it should be known that he was in possession of two knives.”
Kemper said the accused stabber, who is now awaiting charges, has “multiple arrests” on his rap sheet ant is “well-known” to cops — including five arrests in the past year.
He said those busts included assault and sex crime charges.
The two subway attacks came as police were in the midst of a manhunt for a serial stabber sought for a series of random attacks in Queens and Brooklyn — including at least four in the past week.
Jermaine Rigueur was arrested Wednesday night and charged with those incidents.