A 68-year-old woman was slashed in the face with a knife Saturday morning at the Sheepshead Bay B and Q station after a dispute with a man who was holding open the subway’s emergency exit door. The confrontation began around 9 a.m., and the attacker fled on a southbound Q train before NYPD Transit officers took a 70-year-old man wearing a hoodie into custody at the station.
According to the New York Post, the man had propped open the emergency exit door when he had a run-in with the woman, who was nearby. He allegedly held the knife against her face, cutting her and causing her to bleed, before escaping onto the platform and boarding a train. The woman refused medical attention at the scene, and a person of interest was taken into custody, with charges still pending as of the report.
The dynamic described in the incident — someone propping open an emergency exit and getting into it with a rider — is not unusual at subway access points, where people sometimes hold the doors open and ask incoming riders for money to enter, per the Post’s reporting. Those doors are meant strictly for egress, not entry, but enforcement has long been inconsistent across the system.
Cutting Someone’s Face Carries Serious Felony Exposure
Under New York Penal Law § 120.05, cutting a victim’s face with a knife or other dangerous instrument constitutes second-degree assault, a Class D violent felony punishable by two to seven years in state prison, according to Fast Law Firm, P.C. The charge applies when physical injury is intentionally or recklessly inflicted with a deadly weapon, which is consistent with how the Sheepshead Bay attack has been described by police sources…