An on-duty MTA conductor was hospitalized Easter Sunday after being stabbed on a Bronx subway platform, according to police.
The conductor, 33, was sitting on a bench in the 149 Street-Grand Concourse subway station at around 10:40 a.m. when he engaged in a verbal argument with his alleged attacker, Walter River, 20, of East Harlem, an NYPD spokesman said.
That dispute, on the southbound platform, escalated, and Rivera allegedly brandished a knife, stabbing the worker several times in the arms and torso, the police said.
Rivera was arrested at the station and charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapon. It was not clear what caused the argument between the two men.
The conductor, a five-year veteran at the MTA, was transported to Lincoln Medical Center in serious but stable condition.
The attack followed two same-day assaults on women transit workers in the borough. During that attack just more than a week ago, a man splashed urine he had been carrying on a bus operator and train conductor.
“We demand that the full weight of the law now come down on the individual arrested for this attack,” Tony Utano, the president of the transit workers’ union, Transport Workers Union Local 100, said in a statement. “We also demand that the city step up and make the subway safer for both workers and riders. We want to go to work and return to our families safe and sound.”
