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.
Mark Ford, 27, was arrested at the Bedford Park station in the Bronx on Thursday morning, NYPD officials said at a briefing.
He was slapped with charges of assault and criminal possession of a weapon, according to police.
The suspected stabber is “well-known” to cops, with multiple arrests on his rap sheet — with five in the past year, including assault and sex crime charges, NYPD Transit Bureau Chief Michael Kemper told reporters.
The Bronx resident has been arrested a total of 21 times, cops said Thursday evening – including five felonies. He has been cuffed for assaults, petty larceny and criminal possession of weapons, according to cops.
In the first transit assault, the creep 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, Kemper said.
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.
Police said a 27-year-old career criminal stabbed two straphangers in unprovoked attacks less than two hours apart. Christopher Sadowski
NYPD Transit Bureau Chief Michael Kemper said cops nabbed a suspect in two random subway attacks.
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.”
Police said the first of two random attacks was at 6 a.m. Wednesday at the 59th Street/Columbus Circle station. Christopher SadowskiThe 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.
