A deranged serial stabber randomly attacked at least five innocent victims in NYC — sparking a frantic manhunt that ended with cops arresting a suspect Wednesday.

The suspected slasher — who wasn’t immediately charged or named — is believed to have stabbed a man Jan. 8, then attacked four more victims in Springfield Gardens and Jamaica, Queens this week — and he may even be tied to a Brooklyn assault Wednesday.

“We have an unidentified individual who is walking around the street randomly stabbing people with a hunting knife,” NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said at a press briefing Wednesday evening, before cops confirmed they’d taken someone into custody.

The unprovoked attacks have had a chilling effect on the borough.

“I’ve never been nervous around here before but now I am,” said Raymond Coombs, who lives near 134th Avenue and Guy R. Brewer Boulevard, where two victims were attacked Wednesday morning.

“That’s crazy,” Coombs said. “We don’t know what’s setting him off. Is he doing this haphazardly? What the heck is setting him off to do this to people? He got nothing better to do?”

A local merchant who would only give his name as Noel said the slashing spree “makes me feel unsafe in the neighborhood.

“It makes me feel bad because I don’t see the reason. Why go around stabbing people like that?” he said. “It makes me a little frustrated.”

The string of random stabbings began at 6:20 p.m. on Jan. 8, when police said a 61-year-old man was knifed in the lower back while walking on 137th Avenue and 135th Street, police said. 

“In this incident, the suspect actually laughed in the victim’s face after he stabbed him,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Wednesday.

Then, between Tuesday and Wednesday, the knife-wielding creep attacked a woman and three men in four more attacks in Springfield Gardens and Jamaica, according to police.

Shaneka Anderson, 34, told The Post she was walking home from her job with the TSA at LaGuardia Airport just after midnight Tuesday, at 158th Street and 134th Avenue in Springfield Gardens when the fiend snuck up from behind.

“Just as I’m walking to my house, I’m about to get to my house [and] he stabs me in the back,” Anderson said in a phone interview Wednesday. “I didn’t realize he had. I felt like he just punched me and he takes off.”

She heard him mumbling, but couldn’t make out anything decipherable while he made a slippery getaway, she said.

“I fall and as I’m turning, I just see him stumbling away,” Anderson said. “It was the first big snow and he’s slipping on the snow as he’s trying to get back up and runs around the corner.

“He was slipping,” she said. “It was wet out there. He wasn’t wearing boots, it was just like sneakers.”

Once inside, Anderson noticed the blood coming from her wound.

“I was in shock,” she recalled of the attack. “I was wheezing.”

She was treated in a hospital.

Investigators believe the same assailant was responsible for another unprovoked attack four blocks away at 134th Avenue and Guy R. Brewer Boulevard Wednesday morning, police sources said.

Two more separate attacks followed around 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday when a 74-year-old man walking his wife to work outside 161-05 134th Avenue was ambushed from behind. 

Kenny said the suspect knifed the victim in the abdomen “without saying a word” before running off to 161st Street — where he immediately confronted his next target, a 41-year-old man.

Both victims — who do not know each other — were taken to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where they were listed in stable condition.

The older victim had stumbled his way into a nearby dry cleaning business, according to the owner, Bruce An, 62. 

“I was sweeping my floor around 7:30 a.m.,” An told The Post. “One old man, he opened the door and asked me to help. I said, ‘What happened?’ I thought he fell on the street.

“He said. ‘Call 911.’ I said, ‘What happened?’” An recalled. “He said he was walking on the street around the corner and one young man came behind them. He stabbed them and he ran. He was just walking on the street and bang!”

“When I saw him at first, I saw all the blood on his hand,” he added. “I thought it was a minor [thing] that happened but later when the officer came and opened his jacket [it was] filled with blood — his back — I mean it was a serious problem back there.”

In the most recent attack, police said the suspect stabbed a 36-year-old man after the two got into a beef over a seat on a city bus in Jamaica around 8 a.m. on Wednesday.

The attack took place at Parsons Boulevard and Archer Avenue after the two men got off the MTA bus, cops said.

“Our victim gets on the bus on 115th Avenue,” Kenny said at a briefing. “The perpetrator is already on the bus. Our victim asks … ‘Can I sit down next to you?’ and he agrees.

“At some point during the trip other seats become available and the perpetrator asks, ‘There’s free seats, you can move away from me.’ And the victim declines to move, and that’s what starts the fight.”

Police Commissioner Edward Caban described the slasher earlier Wednesday as “armed and dangerous.” 

The NYPD on Wednesday released video of the suspect walking back and forth in front of a storefront, with the hood of his gray sweatshirt pulled up over his head.

Cops conducted an extensive video canvas of the area and took a person of interest into custody Wednesday evening, near Tuesday’s attack, according to police sources.

Authorities are now probing whether an unprovoked attack of a man Wednesday morning on the J/M/Z subway platform in Bushwick is also tied to the same suspected serial slasher, police sources said.

That incident happened at 9:40 a.m., with the victim was knifed once in the chest and taken to Woodhull Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries, cops said.

The suspect fled from the train at the next stop, Flushing Avenue, police said.

“I’m scared,” John Lin, manager of Lucky Nail Spa on Guy R. Brewer Boulevard, told The Post on Wednesday. “He’s still out there.

“We will probably close early now,” Lin said. “It’s no good. We’re all scared.”

In an apparently unrelated attack in the Bronx, a 19-year-old man was stabbed once in the arm on board a northbound 2 train at Morris Park Avenue and East 180th Street, police said.

The victim of that attack, which happened at 7:50 a.m., went to Jacobi Medical Center, where he was listed in stable condition.

The suspect fled onto the street.

Additional reporting by Kevin Sheehan