A suspect is in custody after several people were injured in a stabbing near The Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker Street in Manhattan’s West Village, according to a report.
A 911 call came in reporting an incident at W 11th St & Bleecker St, the Citizen website stated at 9.58am on Thursday morning.
First responders arrived at the scene to attend to several stabbing victims with non-life-threatening injuries and officers called a Level 1 Mobilization and request for additional units as the search for the suspect expanded.
Officers said that the suspect was an African American man wearing a gold chain and a navy blue shirt who fled the scene in the direction of an E train station, according to the site, which stated at 10.27am that officers reported having detained the suspect.
The Independent has reached out to the NYPD for comment.
Eli Klein, an art dealer and publisher according to his bio on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, wrote shortly before 10am on Thursday that “Someone was just attacked in what looked like a stabbing a few feet away from me and my baby girl here in Manhattan’s West Village. NYC really needs to take broader steps to get violent criminals off of the streets”.
“Looks like he just went on to stab more people, unless this is a different criminal, which wouldn’t surprise me. My description of the attacker I saw is: Black, male, 30s, 5’10, gray outfit,” he added in reference to the Citizen report.
The 45-year-old told the Daily Mail that he was walking with his wife and child when the attack occurred, saying that he heard the suspect shout “I’m going to get you” in addition to the N-word. He added that he wasn’t sure if the suspect and the victim in the stabbing he witnessed, also a man, knew each other.
“I just saw the attack and then, because I am with my baby and wife, we just scurried away right. It happened so close, it was 10, 15 feet away and we were on the same side of the sidewalk,” he told the outlet. “Normally I would stop to help the guy or take a picture of the suspect and give it to the police but in this instance, I had my baby with me, we just ran, we didn’t wait.”
Mr Klein said that he has lived in New York his whole life and that crime is on the rise.
“We’ve seen a steady decrease since whenever it was, decades ago, but unfortunately the decrease has stopped,” he told the Mail. “It’s not like it was in the 1980s or the early 90s, when it was much worse than this, but you want things to keep getting better and the improvement, the overall trajectory, has stopped.”
“It’s unfortunate and it is scary. It is heading in the wrong direction,” he added.
