Joseph Cornier, 26, was riding the subway with his girlfriend at 9:25 p.m. when…
By Dustin Brown
A Sunnyside man was slashed with a boxcutter in an unprovoked attack on a Manhattan-bound No. 7 train as it traveled through Long Island City Friday evening, police said.
Joseph Cornier, 26, was riding the subway with his girlfriend at 9:25 p.m. when his attacker, a man believed to be about 20 years old, stepped into his car at the Queensboro Plaza station, police said.
Without saying a word, the man pulled out a boxcutter and stabbed Cornier once in the neck shortly before the train pulled into the Hunters Point station, where he fled, authorities said.
Cornier, a resident of Sunnyside, was treated for his slash wounds and held for observation at Elmhurst Hospital Center, hospital spokesman Dario Centorcelli said. He was released Saturday evening.
Police said they did not know of any motive for the stabbing in which no arrests had been made.
Civic leader Jerry Walsh said Cornier’s stabbing — which was only one in a rash of citywide subway attacks last week — is cause for anxiety although he generally considers the transit system to be safe.
“We’re concerned for our community and anyone else who takes the No. 7,” said Walsh, the president of the Dutch Kills Civic Association, which covers the neighborhood north of Queens Plaza. “I take the trains at night, about 8:30 at night. I don’t have much of a problem. I usually see cops in Queens Plaza.”
A spokesman for New York City Transit declined to comment about the incident, referring questions about subway safety to the Police Department.
