A woman stabbed an innocent onlooker in the head in an apparently unprovoked attack that may be linked to a road-rage incident in Queens, police said Friday.
The 52-year-old victim was sitting on his porch outside his home on 53rd Ave. by 213th St. in Bayside when the woman, a stranger, approached and stabbed him in the head before fleeing in a red sedan around 11:47 a.m. on Thursday, cops said.
“I was like, ‘What the hell?’” said the victim, who asked to remain anonymous. “I was so confused. I couldn’t believe she would do what she did.”
The man sustained a puncture wound and was taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Queens with a minor injury, according to police.
Melissa Duran, 39, was arrested Friday for the stabbing and charged with attempted murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon.
Just before the attack, the victim heard a cacophony of car drivers honking at a red car that was double-parked, blocking traffic on 53rd Ave., he said.
“I didn’t think much of it,” the victim said. “I was like, people honk all the time. This is what New Yorkers do.”
The red car then pulled up in front of the victim’s building, and the suspect, who police described as a heavyset woman dressed all in black, stepped out of the vehicle. The victim, who was expecting a delivery, said the woman was carrying something in her hand that he thought might be his package.
After unsuccessfully trying to enter a neighboring building, the woman returned to her car and, after noticing the victim glance at her, shouted, “Look away, boy! Look away, boy!”
“I asked her what your problem was,” the victim said. “That was enough to set her off.”
It was then, as the woman approached him, that the man realized the object in her hand was a knife.
“She unsheathed the knife,” he said. “Then she just walked up to me and took a swing aimed at my head.”
“My head got hit, and then she left the front porch. She walked off, and then she drove away.”
The blow caused a minor skull fracture and a gash that required three stitches to close.
“Luckily, she had terrible aim,” the victim said. “She missed my artery, missed my nerve. Had she stabbed one inch higher or lower, the consequences would be a lot worse.”
Duran has six prior arrests in New York, including for an assault in June 2025. The Bayside victim said he “feels safer” following her arrest.
“If she was still at large, who knows, she could come back to finish the job,” he said. “She could decide to harm my other family members. I feel safer that she’s off the street, and hopefully she will be off the street until she can get some psychiatric help.”
A neighbor told the Daily News he saw the suspect sitting in a car that was double-parked and blocking traffic on 53rd Ave. before the assault.
“There was a red car, and I found it strange,” the man said. “It was kind of diagonally parked. So, like, so when you’re diagonally parked here, you’re blocking the road.”
Her odd parking position obstructed traffic and incited frustrated drivers to honk their horns as they tried to get around her car, witnesses told CBS News.
According to witnesses, the woman appeared frustrated by the honking, got back into her car, and drove it a couple of feet forward before stopping outside the victim’s home, where she proceeded to confront him.
“She then asked my husband, ‘What are you looking at?’ And then my husband just (did) not respond to her,” the victim’s wife told CBS. “And then she just, for no reason, stabbed my husband.”
“I see he’s full of blood,” she added, “around the head, shirt, everywhere.”