At least five people were stabbed or slashed in a spurt of violence across the Big Apple on Sunday – including two who appeared to be attacked at random, cops and sources said.
In the earliest assault, around 1:30 a.m., a brute bizarrely hugged a 22-year-old man before slashing his neck in what appeared to be an unprovoked attack on Canal Street near West Broadway in SoHo, sources said.
The victim believed he’d been punched at first – but then realized he was bleeding and had been slashed with a “sharp object,” cops and sources said.
He was treated on scene for a cut on his neck. The alleged slasher remains at large.
Then around 5:10 a.m., a menace slashed a 47-year-old man across his face after trying to extort him for money in East Harlem, cops and sources said.
The two men had just met for the first time on East 116th Street near Park Avenue when the attacker begged him for cash and then knifed him on the left side of his face, cutting his mouth, sources said.
It is unclear whether the victim was hospitalized for his wounds, and the suspect has not been caught.
In another apparently random knifing, a stranger slashed a 47-year-old woman on the left side of her face on Warwick Street near Dumont Avenue in East New York around 8 a.m., cops and sources said.
The assailant fled on foot, and the victim was taken to Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center, where she was listed in stable condition.
Then around 12:40 p.m., two men, 25 and 28, got into a dust-up with another man on West 190th Street near St. Nicholas Avenue in Fort George when their rival stabbed both of them, sources said.
Both men were knifed in the torso, and the older man was also stabbed in the back, the sources said.
The still-at-large attacker is known to both of the victims and the stabbing stemmed from an ongoing beef, sources said.
Both victims were uncooperative and hospitalized in stable condition.
