A 28-year-old career criminal who allegedly slashed three women in the NYC subway system on Father’s Day has been arrested and charged with three counts of felony assault.
Kemal Rideout appeared in the Manhattan Criminal Court on Wednesday after police arrested him on the corner of East 122nd Street and Second Avenue in East Harlem while he was causally munching on a bag of potato chips after being kicked off the bus for fare evasion.
Rideout has been accused of slashing three women at the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall and 86th Street stations on Father’s Day.
The first victim, Bianchelly Diplan, 19, was walking out of the 86th Street station on her way to Paris Baguette to pick up a cake when she felt the back of her leg get cut so deeply she required 19 stitches, as she became one of the many New Yorkers to experience random slashings.
‘I noticed him staring at me,’ she told the New York Post. ‘He was staring at me [from 125th Street] until 86th Street, so a good four or five minutes.
‘I just felt a little weird, a little tense. He seemed a little off. Just the way he walked, his body language was off. You know when you have that gut feeling? He seemed off.’
Kemal Rideout appeared in the Manhattan Criminal Court Wednesday after police nabbed him on the corner of East 122nd Street and Second Avenue in East Harlem while he was causally munching on a bag of potato chips after being kicked off the bus for fare evasion
Rideout has been accused of slashing three women at the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall and 86th Street stations on Father’s Day. He has been charged with three counts of felony assault and is being held without bail at Rikers
The teen said she came face-to-face with her attacker after he cut her and ‘he just stared at me then walked away.’
‘I just started crying. I was in shock. He didn’t say anything. He went back down the stairs and I could see he was walking on the platform,’ she told the outlet.
Another woman, 48, was slashed in the right leg in the same station on the platform before Rideout dashed back into the downtown 4-train around 4.15pm. Fifteen minutes later, Rideout allegedly attack a 28-year-old victim in the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station, police said.
The third victim was texting her boyfriend when she felt someone slash her.
‘Some random guy walked past me and sliced me — I don’t know what he used — and nonchalantly walked away. My body was in shock. I didn’t feel the pain right away,’ she told the Post.
‘My first instinct was to get a video of him, and then [I] looked down and saw the blood coming down.’
The unidentified victim did manage to get a video of Rideout, which later helped police identify an assailant.
The first victim, Bianchelly Diplan, 19, (pictured) was walking out of the 86th Street station on her way to Paris Baguette to pick up a cake when she felt the back of her leg get cut so deeply she required 19 stitches
The victim was seen moving between train cars to catch a glimpse of him as he calmly traversed the moving train. After he managed to move onto a different car, the victim stopped, panning the camera down toward her leg, which was dripping in heavy amounts of blood as passengers stared silently.
The second the man left the car, the female victim addressed the passengers, begging for someone to ‘call 911’ as she held back tears.
The massive gash required a tourniquet and she was she was rushed to Bellevue Hospital for treatment.
‘He was walking away slowly. He was walking nonchalantly. He didn’t run. He brought no attention to himself at all. You could see him going through the door. He was at the tip of the door. He looked back. He saw my daughter filming. He went through and shut the door,’ the woman’s mother told the Post.
‘Her mental state will never be the same.’
Rideout was eventually apprehended near a bus stop in Harlem on Tuesday. Cops spotted him after recognizing his shoes and he was carrying a bag with the outfit he was wearing on the train on Sunday.
Chief of Transit Michael Kemper said at a press conference that he was ‘proud’ of his officers and ‘depressed’ by the incident.
MTA CEO Janno Lieber praised the cops who caught Rideout, saying: ‘It is a great comfort to our riders and everyone in our region to know that the NYPD has subway riders’ backs.’
The career criminal had four priors outside of the city before Sunday’s trio of attacks.
‘For forcible touching in Norwich 2016, for assault 3 again in Norwich in 2012, for attempted rape in Varick, New York, and 2011 for criminal mischief in Riverhead,’ Chief of Detectives James Essig said at a press conference.
Rideout is being held on Riker’ Island without bail.
