A 44-year-old woman who was stabbed in the shoulder and kicked down a flight of stairs at a Brooklyn subway station by another commuter was furious to learn a judge had released her attacker without bail, the Daily News has learned.
The victim was attacked at the Jay St-Metrotech subway station in Downtown Brooklyn at the tail end of rush hour around 9:20 a.m. Thursday.
Jahlayah Blondel, 26, was arrested within an hour, but Judge Masateru Marubashi ordered her released without bail despite a Brooklyn assistant district attorney requesting she be held on $10,000.
“That’s not right,” said the victim, who wished to remain anonymous when reached by the Daily News Friday. “She should be in jail.”
“I don’t want people like that on the train,” she said. “Now I have to watch every day to see if she’s on the train or not. What do you have to do to get bail, kill somebody?”
The victim, a housekeeper working at a hotel, was transferring from an R train to a C train on her way to work a 12-hour shift when she heard the other woman grumbling on the escalator behind her.
“She was bitching behind me. She said, ‘I need to move,’” the victim recounted. “I said, ‘Take the stairs if you want to walk.’”
The dispute continued onto the mezzanine, where the victim said the suspect began chanting, “Come outside, come outside.”
“I said, ‘I’m not going outside, I’m going to work,” the victim told The News.
It was then that Blondell got in the victim’s face, pulled a knife from her bag, and stabbed her in the shoulder, according to prosecutors.
“I thought it was a Taser,” the victim said. “She stabbed me in the shoulder and poked me in the arm. I only saw her close it. It was a black and red knife.”
Blondel then kicked the victim in her abdomen, sending her plummeting down the stairs. The victim snapped photos of her attacker after the other woman followed her down.
“When I took her pictures, she said, ‘Call the cops!’ I said, ‘Don’t worry, I certainly will,’” the victim recounted. “Then she ran out of the other exit.”
Medics took the victim to NYU Langone Health—Cobble Hill, where her minor injury was treated.
Blondel tossed away her knife as she ran off, police said. A short time later, she surrendered and was charged with second-degree assault, weapons possession and menacing.
Police said the two women did not know each other but got into an argument as the victim was exiting the train. The quarrel continued up the escalator leading to the mezzanine.
Police found an imitation pistol in Blondel’s bag, but it was not used during the assault, officials said.
This was Blondel’s first arrest in New York City, officials said. She pleaded not guilty at her arraignment, and Judge Marubashi released her on non-monetary conditions, according to court papers.
She’s due back in court on Nov. 10.
Felony assaults continue to be a problem in the city’s subway system — up 8%, to 441 from 410, even as the overall transit crime rate is down by 1%, officials said.
Roughly half of all attacks on the rails are targeting a few select groups, NYPD Transit Chief Joseph Gulotta explained.
“What is driving them is assaults on police officers, assaults on MTA workers, and assaults on the elderly,” Gulotta said at a press briefing at the NYPD’s Manhattan HQ last week. “When you put those three together, that’s almost 50% of felony assaults.”
“That’s something we’re really geared up on. It’s something we take very seriously.”