Subway slashing attack in Midtown being investigated as anti-gay hate crime

A Friday attack on the subway in Manhattan in which a male commuter was cut by a man wielding a box cutter and making “anti-gay statements” is being investigated as a hate crime, the NYPD said Sunday.

The 27-year-old victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was treated for defensive hand wounds, police said. He was on a northbound A train approaching Penn Station when he was attacked by an unknown assailant, who then fled.

The attack followed a separate assault about 3:40 a.m. Thursday in which a subway conductor was slashed in the neck on Thursday. The conductor, who received numerous stitches, had been operating a southbound A train pulling into the Fulton Street and Rockaway Avenue Station in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Train service on the A and C lines was severely delayed later Thursday, with MTA officials blaming a slowdown by union members demanding safer working conditions.

Suspects in both attacks remain at large.