NYC man nabbed in subway slashings had just been freed after knife dispute with cops
A Queens man was arrested over the weekend for two random subway slashings in as many days — crimes he allegedly committed after being picked up, then let go, for brandishing a knife at cops.
Donny Ubiera, 32, stabbed two straphangers — one in the face and the other in the neck — without provocation in separate incidents Friday and Saturday morning along the Flushing-to-Midtown No. 7 subway line, the NYPD said in a statement.
The accused serial slasher had just gotten out of jail Thursday — with a single night of “time served” — for allegedly refusing to put down a large knife when confronted by Queens officers on the street and then trying to flee with it the day before.
“This is nothing if not predictable,’’ disgusted NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell fumed in a statement Sunday, railing against the city’s criminal-justice system for so easily freeing suspects such as Ubiera.
“Your police are doing their job. We keep arresting him,” she said of the suspect, who has at least 14 prior arrests, including for assaults.
“His record demonstrates that each time he is involved in unprovoked violence against innocent victims, the criminal justice system has him back to the streets and the subways rather than jail or psychiatric treatment. He inevitably targets another victim.”
Law-enforcement sources said Ubiera has been the subject of calls to cops for an emotionally disturbed person four times.
He was nabbed Saturday night for the subway slashings — after some eagle-eyed officers recognized him on the street in the same flashy gold and black button-up shirt he was allegedly wearing during the train assaults.
Surveillance footage had captured him in the shirt — menacing some people in a subway station with a knife, sources said.
The first transit-system attack occurred at 8:40 a.m. during the Friday rush at Queensboro Plaza in Long Island City, Queens, and left the 62-year-old victim with cuts to the face and hand, according to police.
There was so much blood in the train car that it had to be taken out of service, sources said.
The victim needed stitches to close his wounds.
Ubiera then allegedly struck again the next day at 7:15 a.m. at the 74th Street-Broadway station in Jackson Heights, Queens. Cops said he approached his unsuspecting victim, displayed a “large” knife and stabbed the man in the neck and fled.
The victim was taken to Elmhurst Hospital in critical but stable condition, cops said.
The NYPD recovered a knife from the scene. Ubiera was nabbed about 12 hours later.
On Wednesday, two days before the first subway slashing, Ubiera faced off with cops responding to a 911 call for a man with a knife, sources said.
The suspect refused to put down his knife and fled but was quickly nabbed and charged with criminal possession of a weapon and a controlled substance, as well as reckless endangerment. He was let go Thursday on “time served,’’ sources said.
That left him free to allegedly commit the straphanger slashings.
Ubiera now faces two counts each for attempted murder, assault and weapons possession in the subway attacks.
Cops on Sunday also charged him in a separate earlier incident from Wednesday at a Queens bakery in which he allegedly hit a 45-year-old worker at Delicias Caleñas on Roosevelt Avenue with a stick.
His previous run-ins with the law also include a Jan. 8 incident in which he allegedly whipped out a large knife and threatened a bodega worker who tried to stop him from shoplifting a beer on 74th Street in Jackson Heights, Queens.
Just weeks earlier, on Dec. 27, Ubiera was arrested for four different attacks committed that day, including an assault on two employees of a Duane Reade on East 2nd Street in Manhattan and another on two deli workers at Sunny and Annie’s in Alphabet City.
Ubiera was also booked Nov. 5 for allegedly punching his roommate at a homeless shelter on Ditmars Boulevard in Queens.
