The EMS worker who was repeatedly stabbed in an ambulance by a convicted felon she was treating suffered “significant” blood loss and nerve damage to her thigh that requires additional surgery, prosecutors revealed Friday.
Rudy Garcia, 48, was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on an attempted murder charge for allegedly attacking the 25-year-old Mount Sinai West first responder with a kitchen knife while en route to a hospital near West 58th Street and 9th Avenue on Wednesday night.
He stabbed her “several times while she attempted to aid him,” leaving her with “serious physical injury from the stab wounds to her chest, arm and leg,” Assistant District Attorney Lauren Breen said.
The EMT required stitches to her chest, underwent surgery on her thigh wounds and “suffered significant blood loss,” Breen said.
She will need additional surgery to repair the nerve damage in her thigh and an extended stay in the hospital, according to the prosecutor.
After Garcia was taken into custody, he bizarrely told a detective the EMTs treating him “are fake” and “kidnapped” him and argued he didn’t need medical attention, Breen said.
Judge Soma Syed ordered Garcia held on $500,000 cash bail.
Garcia has two prior felony convictions for assaulting a police officer and three misdemeanor convictions, and has at least two failures to appear, prosecutors said.
In 2017, he headbutted a police officer who was trying to arrest him for punching his sister.
He also has a prior conviction for criminal possession of a weapon for possessing a boxcutter.
His most recent brush with the law came in June after he was caught in a subway station with a knife hidden in his boot, “which is the same place he stored the secreted knife,” Breen said.
Dramatic footage obtained by The Post shows the chaotic aftermath of Wednesday’s attack.
The EMT collapses on the ground, screaming and crying in pain as a colleague tends to her, video shows.
Garcia goes back into the ambulance as another worker yells, “What the hell is he doing? What are you doing?”
“Back off now! Keep your hands down!” Garcia yells, leaping back out
“I don’t know what happened,” Garcia can be heard saying in the video.
“You stabbed her, bro!” an EMS worker shouts back.