A Metro-North passenger blasting music from his phone stabbed a stranger on a train entering Grand Central Terminal for telling him to turn it down, MTA police said Sunday.
Abdul Malik Little, 46, was charged with attempted murder and weapons possession for the bloody Saturday night attack at his arraignment Sunday in Manhattan Criminal Court. He was ordered held on $50,000 cash bail or $150,000 bond.
“Mr Little doesn’t fit into type of case we see in the press,” his lawyer Jackie Dombroff told Judge Janet McDonnell, asserting: “The way that the press is including this in the trend of stories of stranger attacks on the subway couldn’t be further from the truth.”
According to police, Little and the 31-year-old victim were riding on a New Haven Line train entering the transit hub about 6:50 p.m. Saturday when the younger man complained about the blaring tune.
That led to an argument, and Little allegedly whipped out a knife, stabbing the victim twice in the chest, police said.
The victim managed to get off the train and find two patrolling MTA police officers. He pointed out Little and the officers arrested him and recovered the knife, MTA officials said.
Medics took the victim to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition.
On Sunday, Dombroff argued the confrontation “is not an instance of someone lashing out at an undeserving stranger.”
“He wants to clear his name,” the lawyer said at the arraignment.
It’s the second attack at Grand Central since Christmas Eve, when an unhinged man slashed two strangers in an unprovoked rampage in the subway station there.
“F–k these people!” screamed Jason Sargeant, 28, as he pulled the emergency brake on a No. 5 train entering the station, police and MTA officials said.
As he left the train, he slashed a 42-year-old man in the left wrist without warning, then after crossing through a turnstile on the mezzanine level lunged at a 26-year-old woman, punching her in the face and cutting her neck and throat, cops said. Both victims were expected to recover.
