Cops on Wednesday busted and charged a 40-year-old man wanted in a series of stabbings of homeless people, officials said.

The suspect, Trevon Murphy, was taken into custody just before 7 a.m. in Harlem after a retired Rikers Island guard spotted him at an Upper Manhattan bus stop wearing clothes that matched the ones in images released of the serial slashing suspect, police and sources said. 

Murphy  — who has a prior arrest for a recent slugging at a homeless shelter in Queens — was slapped with two attempted murder charges and a pair of assaults, the NYPD announced Wednesday afternoon.

He was due in court on July 22 for the homeless shelter punch, and was arrested 10 times in Tennessee between 2000 and 2010, mostly for drug-related officials, according to records, officials and police sources.

The suspect waived his Miranda rights and is being interrogated, city officials said Wednesday afternoon. He was also wanted on a narcotic warrant in Tennessee, they said. 

In the April 10 incident in Queens, Murphy allegedly punched his roommate in the facility in the face while he was asleep. 

Ruben Arias — who worked at Rikers Island for 21 years before retiring in 2016 — told The Post he recognized Murphy’s clothing from seeing his picture that was distributed by the NYPD on TV news.

The 55-year-old recalled seeing the alleged repeated stabber while en route to his job as a security guard at the Children’s Aid Society about 6:40 a.m. Wednesday, when he got off the subway and walked to a bus stop on 125th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. 

“After I entered the bus, I turned to my right and I noticed him sitting on the bench,” he said in an afternoon phone interview.

“Immediately, I told the bus driver to pull over, to let me off, I got off the bus, walked back to where he was sitting, dialed 911 and waited for them to come.”

“I just waited for them to come. I told them this is the guy from the news, they looked on their phones, saw his face on [them] … and they took him into custody,” Arias explained.

The former jail guard, who retired in 2016, told The Post that Murphy’s arrest was “very easy” and that the suspect “didn’t really resist.” 

The head of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association called Arias a “hero.”  

“Even as retirees, our officers maintain a deep commitment to keeping our city safe, which is exactly what retired correction officer Ruben Arias did today in spotting and turning in a cold blooded killer to the NYPD,” said Benny Boscio in a prepared statement. 

“Thanks to his quick thinking, this dangerous individual has been brought to justice, [undoubtedly] saving other lives in the process. He’s our hero.”

During a press conference, Mayor Eric Adams praised NYPD cops and Arias for getting the alleged serial stabber off the streets. 

“I want to thank the commissioner and her team for apprehending a dangerous person that assaulted our vulnerable New Yorkers,” he told reporters. “It really highlights how imperative it is to move people into safe spaces, shelters and eventually into permanent housing.” 

“But I also want to take the moment to commend a retired member of the correction officer family. A correctional officer played a major role in the coordination with the police department in apprehending this dangerous person. It just really goes to show you that people who provide public safety in the city, both on duty off duty and upon retirement, continue to play a vital role in keeping our city safe,” added the mayor, a retired police captain. 

The retired correction officer saw Murphy, and recognized him from pictures the NYPD released, officials revealed during the news conference. He was still wearing the Innocence Project shirt and the neon sneakers that he was pictured in. The CO called 911, and subsequently flagged down police officers in the area, officials said.

He “went beyond the call of duty to ensure that this dangerous person was removed from our streets,” Adams declared. 

“Job well done by our uniformed officers on the ground. Job well done by our detectives, who gathered the information that allowed us to put out the visuals that we had. A job well done on bringing this person into apprehension,” he said.

 NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said Murphy’s alleged stabbings were in part caused by ineffective criminal justice policies, citing his criminal history in Tennessee and recent attack in the homeless shelter.  

“This is a story we have told many times before,” she said. “This suspect should not have been on our streets.” 

On Tuesday, The Post reported that the NYPD was looking for an alleged serial stabber who carried out a string of attacks targeting New Yorkers sleeping on city benches, including an assault last week that killed a 34-year-old man.

Murphy snuck up on three homeless people and plunged a knife into them while they were in parks in Manhattan from July 5 through July 11, police said.

On July 5, the former Tennessee resident allegedly crept up on a 34-year-old who was sleeping on a bench in Hudson River Park, where he allegedly stabbed him in the stomach, police said.

Sources told The Post on Wednesday that the 40-year-old told police that “a voice in my head told me to stab him because he raped me.”

Officers discovered the man with a wound on his stomach at about 4:40 a.m. Medics rushed him to Bellevue Hospital, where he died.

The knife-wielder allegedly struck again three days later.

He stabbed a 59-year-old homeless man sleeping on a bench near East 49th Street and Madison Avenue about 10 p.m. July 8, police and sources previously told The Post.

The man suffered a stab wound to the stomach and was rushed to New York Presbyterian/ Weill Cornell Medical Center, where he was in stable condition.

Two days later, sources said the suspect knifed a homeless man who was sleeping inside Stanley Isaacs Playground near the FDR Drive.

The 28-year-old victim was near the park’s basketball courts when he felt what he thought was a punch and woke up, according to law enforcement sources.

When he opened his eyes, he saw the suspected serial stabber standing over him holding a knife, the sources said.

The victim started a pursuit of his attacker — but halted it when he realized he had been stabbed, and called 911.

EMS brought the victim to Metropolitan Hospital in stable condition.

The latest victim told cops he recognized his attacker and doesn’t know the man’s actual name, but that he goes by “Delly,” sources said.

The spate of stabbings of homeless Big Apple residents comes about four months after a killer murdered two homeless men and wounded three others in a series of shootings in New York City and Washington, DC.

In March, he was arrested for the shootings.

Additional reporting by Gabrielle Fonrouge