Maniac arrested in NYC subway slashings, NYPD sources say
The vagrant sought in a series of random subway slashings was nabbed by eagle-eyed cops on a street corner Tuesday — eating a bag of chips after he got kicked off an MTA bus for fare evasion, police said.
Alleged maniac Kemal Rideout, 28, was busted by a trio of officers and their sergeant after the co🐲ps recognized him from a wanted poster around 9:40 a.m. at East 122nd Street and Second Avenue in East Harlem, police said.
Police said Rideout was apprehended wh🅘ile casually munching chips after he was booted from a bus for trying to beat the fare.
He was charged with three counts of felony assault for his alleged attacks on three f♛emale strangers in Manhattan on Sunday.
The suspect has five prior busts in the state — one of them in the Big Apple — including for attempted rape, assault, criminal mischief and forcible touching, and has a history of mental illness, accord𝔉ing to authorities.
In at least three of the cases, including the attempted rape, he pleaded “not responsible” because of mental disease or defect, and a criminal-mischief charge against him in another instance was dismissed on those grounds, sources said.
Rideout was taken to the NYPD’s Transit District 4 in Manhattan after being captured during a two-day manhunt by cops, then walked out Tuesday a🃏fternoon and hauled off to Bellevue Hospital, cops said.
The suspect, wearing a pink polo shirt🐟 and tan pants and wearing a mask, was viciously heckled by bystanders as cops led him out of the 14th Street-Union Squar𒆙e station shortly before 4:30 p.m.
“I’ll slap you! I’ll slap you!” a man yelled after poking fun at the suspect’s tight-fitting pink shirt. “You ain’t got a mother, you piece of s–t.”
Rideout seemed to respond, but his words couldn’t be made out.
The crowd then broke into applause as he was led to a waiting ambulance, with one man shouting, “Clap for the officers!”
Police on Monday had released surveillance footage of the suspect jumping the turn꧒stile at the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall subway st🔯ation in Manhattan after the third attack.
He is linked to two slashings at the 86th Street and Lexington Avenu♍e No. 4 train station on the Upper East Side around 4:15 p.m. Sunday and another about 20 minutes later at the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station, according♋ to police.
The first victim, Bianchelly Diplan, 19, told The Post this week that the creep stared her down, then followed her off the train and slashed the back of her ♒right leg as she climbed the stairs.
“I didn’t know he was behind me on the stairs,” she said. “I felt the cut. It felt like somebody cut me deeply. I looked back at him, and he just stared at me then walked way. I just started crying.”
Diplan sai꧋d she needed 19 stitches to close the gash𓆏.
Police said the suspect cut a second woman at the uptown station before attacking a 28-year-old straphanger at the Brooklyn Bridge station — who sources said was cut so deeply that a tourniquet had to be applied to her leg before she was taken to Bellevue Hospital.
Additional reporting by Joe Marino and Rthvika Suvarna