A 26-year-old Staten Island woman turned herself in to police roughly half an hour after allegedly slashing a stranger during a morning rush-hour confrontation at a busy Brooklyn subway station.
Jahlayah Blondel, 26, of Staten Island, surrendered around 10:10 a.m. Thursday at the NYPD’s Transit District 30 headquarters inside the Hoyt/Schermerhorn Street station, police said. She had fled the Jay Street-MetroTech station after the 9:40 a.m. Attack and ditched the knife, according to authorities.
The victim, 44, had just stepped off an R train when she and Blondel — a complete stranger — became embroiled in a heated argument, cops and sources said. The dispute escalated when Blondel allegedly produced a blade and slashed the older woman on her left shoulder.
Emergency responders transported the wounded commuter to NYU Langone Health—Cobble Hill, where she was treated for minor injuries, police said.
Blondel now faces assault, criminal possession of a weapon and tampering with evidence charges, according to cops. She has no prior arrests in New York City, police noted.
The downtown Brooklyn violence was part of a bloody stretch across the transit system. About 12 hours earlier, a 17-year-old boy suffered a box-cutter slash to his left wrist during a feud with four teenagers on a Harlem subway platform, authorities said. That Wednesday night clash erupted around 9:25 p.m. On the B and C train platform at West 135th Street, cops said. The teen victim was taken to Harlem Hospital in stable condition, while the two male and two female suspects remained at large as of Thursday.
The Jay Street-MetroTech station, where Blondel allegedly attacked the 44-year-old woman, serves as a major transfer point connecting multiple subway lines in Brooklyn’s commercial core. The Hoyt/Schermerhorn Street station where she surrendered sits just one stop away on the same corridor.