A suspect has been nabbed in the slashing of a Danish tourist on the Upper West Side, police sources said Thursday.
After securing surveillance footage of the attacker, cops arrested a 25-year-old man for the slashing early Thursday, police sources said. He is being questioned and is awaiting charges.
The suspect lives a short distance from where the attack took place, cops said.
The 55-year-old victim, visiting from Denmark, was attacked on W. 86th St. near Columbus Ave. about 10:20 a.m. Wednesday, cops said.
According to police, the assailant came up behind the victim — who was walking with two companions — and slashed him from the right ear, along the right cheek and down to his neck.
“F— you, guys!” the knifeman reportedly shouted at the trio.
The victims’ friends, along with Rrustemi, aided him, giving him a shirt, towel and a rag to apply to his wound, before a nurse who lives in nearby building gave the victim an ice pack, according to Rrustemi.
“He was bleeding so badly,” the super said. “He sat there and didn’t say anything. He was losing feeling in his face. He was in shock.”
The victim was taken by medics to Mount Sinai Morningside in stable condition.
Police initially were calling the attack unprovoked. It was not immediately clear what set off the slasher.
A surveillance video of the incident shows three tall men, two of them blond, walking by. Soon after they pass out of the video frame, a young man clutching a blade is seen running furiously after them and then he, too, disappears out of the frame. The attacker then reappears in the video frame, appears to shout something angrily back toward the victim and the other two men, and then runs off in the direction from which he came.
The bloody assault comes on the heels of a horrific random triple murder that played out on Manhattan’s streets earlier in the week. On Monday, three people were stabbed to death in the string of unprovoked knife attacks, which spanned from Chelsea to Kips Bay to near the United Nations. Ramon Rivera, 51, has been charged with murder in each of those three attacks.
