An unhinged man who went on a horrific Queens slashing spree June 22 that began on a subway train had been released from Rikers just weeks before the attack with the condition he get mental health treatment, the Daily News has learned.
Christian Marrero was charged with assaulting two MTA workers and a transit cop in 2023, spent almost a year in jail as his cases wound their way through court and had recently been released on a plea deal — outraging one of the victims in the more recent assaults.
That victim, a 45-year-old straphanger, said he was stunned Marrero was out.
“He was a known psychopath that had been released previously,” said the straphanger, the first of three people alleged slasher Marrero targeted during his June tear. He was cut in the ear, arm and neck, but said a quick move on his part prevented the razor-wielding assailant from potentially slicing open his throat.
“No kidding, he was going to kill me,” said the victim, who did not want to share his name.
According to police and a criminal complaint, the 21-year-old Marrero picked his victims at random, first settling on the 45-year-old at about 8 a.m. on a Jamaica Center-Parsons/Archer station-bound E train,
Marrero then got off the train at the Queens Plaza subway station in Long Island City and went on the attack two more times, slicing a 23-year-old man in the left side of his face on 42nd Road near 27th St. near Hunter St., and a 32-year-old man across the right side of his face on 27th St. near 43rd Ave., according to cops and a criminal complaint. Police nabbed him immediately after the assaults.
Marrero, who faces multiple counts of felony assault, remains held without bail after a June 24 arraignment in Queens Criminal Court.
MTA focus in attacks
The June spree was not the first time police grabbed Marrero in connection with attacks linked to the MTA.
Just a year earlier, on June 14, 2023, at W. 148th St. and Seventh Ave., Marrero yelled that he hated the MTA and began to beat one of the agency’s workers “with a closed fist repeatedly on his head and on his body,” according to a criminal complaint. When another MTA employee tried to help his coworker, Marrero unleashed a flurry of blows on that worker as well, the complaint said.
Two days later Marrero attacked a transit cop at Lenox Ave. near W. 136th St., striking him and spitting in his face, according to court filings.
Marrero went to Rikers Island on June 17, 2023, said a spokesman from the New York City Department of Correction, where he racked up multiple charges of assault, attempted assault and harassment of correction officers for five separate incidents that took place from February through May.
In one of three occurrences in April, Marrero was accused of trying to bust out of his cell when his meal tray arrived, biting an officer on his right wrist and right forearm, according to a criminal complaint. Later that month, he was said to have hurled urine at another correction officer’s face, court filings stated.
A week after his most recent charge of assault took place at Rikers, Marrero appeared in Manhattan Supreme Criminal Court on May 30 and was ordered to complete 8 months of mental health treatment as part of a guilty plea for assaulting the pair of MTA workers and the transit cop the year before.
He was released June 5, just weeks before the Queens slashing spree. It was not clear if Marrero had received any mental health treatment.
Manhattan DA spokesperson Rachel Best said Marrero now faces the prospect of a state prison sentence.
“Every day, it is the hard work of MTA workers that allow New Yorkers and those visiting to travel safely around the City. We take assaults on transit workers seriously and each case is evaluated based on the facts and the law,” Best said.
“Christian Marrero was convicted of a felony and now faces time in state prison. Transit crime continues to decrease in Manhattan due to close collaboration with our law enforcement partners.”
Why was he out?
The MTA, like the victim, expressed concern Marrero was free to strike again.
“This perpetrator, who had pleaded guilty less than a month earlier to attacking multiple MTA employees, should never have been free to find more victims,” MTA spokesperson Joana Flores said.
The 45-year-old victim recalled the horror and chaos that took place after he was cut, with fellow straphangers screaming, one person shouting to pull the alarm and another responding in a panicked tone that they couldn’t find it.
“The exchange is a little bit blurry from there. I attempted to grab him but he still had the blade. He slit my wrist. It was enough that it prevented me from grabbing him,” the victim said. “I was going to go grab him again, the doors to the subway opened and everybody was running out of the train.”
The victim, thinking Marrero was still on the train, waited on the platform with police as other passengers tried to help him stanch the flow of blood, when more victims showed up.
“As I’m sitting in the train station this guy comes running down the steps, ‘Help me, help me, I’ve been stabbed,’” said the victim. “At that moment I realized [Marrero] wasn’t on the train. This was not a coincidence.”
The first victim described a 2 ½ inch gash under the second victim’s eye. “What [the second victim] was most concerned about was the fact that he had seen another guy get stabbed,” the 45-year-old described.
That third victim appears to have taken the worst of the attack, according to a criminal complaint. The blade sliced him from nose to ear, and he needed 30 stitches to close the gash.
To the first victim’s shock, he then saw a familiar figure returning to the station — the man who has been charged with slicing him.
“You just had a stabbing, is anyone looking at your cameras closely? Why is a victim sitting in the subway station telling you that the guy is returning?”
The 45-year-old victim identified Marrero to cops, who placed him under arrest.
“Thanks to a quick arrest by the NYPD, whose strong presence in the subway system helped officers arrest him yet again, it is now up to prosecutors and courts to deliver maximum justice for these latest senseless attacks by a single serial suspect,” said Flores.
Prior to the June attacks, if Marrero had completed the mental health treatment he could have pleaded to the 2023 assaults with time served, but instead he went on the spree in Queens less than three weeks after his release. Now, in addition to those charges he faces state prison time for the cases in Manhattan if he is found fit to stand trial.
On Thursday, Marrero appeared in Manhattan Supreme Criminal Court for the cases involving the MTA employees and transit cop at a hearing regarding a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation. He looked pale and tired, and wore an orange prison jumpsuit and mitts on his hands, which were handcuffed and chained to his waist.
“They are saying he’s fit to proceed,” Marrero’s Legal Aid attorney, Sean Parmenter, said during the brief hearing. “I am not prepared (to).”
Parmenter added that he needed to confer with Marrero’s Queens attorney. Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Barry said she was unfamiliar with the Queens case aside from the charge of assault.
When The News spoke to the 45-year-old victim from the Long Island City attack over a week after the incident, he was still shaken.
“I got 18 stitches on the surface and then I don’t even know how many deep stitches,” he said. His earlobe had to be partially reattached, according to a criminal complaint.
When asked if he would be getting back on the subway, his response was quick and emphatic.
“Hell no,” he answered.
Marrero is due back in Queens Criminal Court for the Long Island City attacks Aug. 20.
With Thomas Tracy
Originally Published: