UPPER EAST SIDE, Manhattan (WABC) — The man accused of slashing three women at two subway stations within minutes of each other on Sunday went on trial on Wednesday.
Police charged Kemal Rideout, 28, with multiple counts of assault and he was taken to Bellevue Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.
Investigators said he targeted three women at random on the New York City subway and slashed their legs with a knife.
It happened in just 16 minutes on the Lexington Avenue line Sunday afternoon. One victim’s wound was so deep that paramedics needed a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. It has 20 points that can be seen and 10 more below.
Eyewitness News reporter Sonia Rincon spoke with the recovering victim Tuesday night, and she’s very relieved the attacker is off the streets.
“I was on the train, texting my boyfriend,” she said, requesting anonymity. “Some random guy walked past me and cut me, I don’t know what he used, and walked away nonchalantly. My body was in shock. I didn’t feel the pain right away. My first instinct was to get a video of him and then he looked down and saw the blood coming down.”
Chilling cellphone video recorded by the 28-year-old victim shows the suspect escaping on the moving train. He says detectives told him the video was helpful in linking the suspect to the other two stabbings.
MTA surveillance cameras captured the suspect charging the turnstiles at the Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall station in the moments after the assault.
Just 16 minutes earlier, detectives say he attacked two other women in the same manner as they exited the 86th Street station on the Upper East Side. He was arrested Tuesday morning in East Harlem.
“Less than 48 hours after the slashings occurred, these officers, armed with the suspect’s photo, observed him walking down an open street in Manhattan and arrested him,” said the head of the traffic division of the NYPD Michael Kemper.
Another victim, 19-year-old Bianchelli Diplan, was attacked while getting off the 4 train at 86th Street.
“I started walking up the steps and then I felt something on the back of my leg. So, like, hold on to it. And I saw there was blood. So I turned around, I see and, like, he was looking. at me and he was crying, crying. And he just walked away,” Diplan said.
WATCH: NYPD briefing on weekend subway shutdown arrests and more
Police believe Rideout also cut off a 48-year-old woman at that station and took the train to the Brooklyn Bridge station. None of the women knew each other and the attacker said nothing.
Law enforcement sources say Rideout has a history of psychiatric problems. He also has a history of arrests on charges including forcible touching, assault and attempted rape. All of this happened upstate.
Police say the same officer who arrested Rideout also spotted another suspect in connection with a fatal stabbing on a subway train Saturday morning.
Claude White, 33, was arrested Monday in connection with the death of 32-year-old Tavon Martin. He was arraigned Tuesday on charges of second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
The motive for the fatal stabbing was a dispute over drugs. White told detectives that Silver, who he knew, “bought k2 and crack and it didn’t happen to him.” An argument over drugs that began at the 59th Street station turned physical at 28th Street, and Silver was stabbed at 23rd Street, where White got off the subway and threw the murder weapon into the road.
He also has a long criminal record and was wanted for a bank robbery earlier this month.
The three metro outages on Sunday afternoon were “unprovoked”. The victims were “complete strangers to each other” and to the suspect.
Metro crime fell 13% last month, but that may be of little comfort to commuters after the violent weekend.
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