His eyes were the most disturbing part.
The brave father who protected his 18-month-old son from a scissor-wielding madman in Riverside Park on Tuesday locked eyes with the heartless manic who plunged a knife in his chest, the victim recalled in a phone call from his hospital bed.
“I made it to a bench…He was on one side and I was on the other side and we saw each other face to face,” said James Fayette, 43, of the Upper West Side.
“He was very calm, very methodical,” Fayette said.
Fayette — one of five victims slashed by the crazed man — said his top priority was to protect his child.
“I was quite terrified of seeing my son stabbed to death. That was my biggest fear,” Fayette said, adding the attacker was tall with broad shoulders.
He said the attacker, who cops named as Julius James Graham, of Texas, slashed him twice in the chest with a knife after he tried to protect a female jogger.
“I told her to run away from the man with the knife. She went south and I ran diagonally away from the man. I was hoping he would leave us alone but that didn’t happen. Then he started chasing me,” Fayette recalled.
“I didn’t believe it was happening at first until she said, ‘He slashed my throat!” Fayette said.
Fayette, a former ballet dancer, was nursing two chest wounds in the intensive care unit of Roosevelt Hospital on Wednesday morning. His injuries are not life-threatening.
His son, Luke, was released from the hospital with a cut on his arm and is doing fine, he said.
Cops say Graham, 43, went on a random stabbing spree in Riverside Park Tuesday at around 8 a.m. before he was finally wrestled to the ground by cops and a good Samaritan. In total he slashed five people – two men, two women and Fayette’s 2-year-old son, authorities said.
“Around 7:50 a.m., the suspect stabs a woman, a jogger in the back on the running path on Riverside Drive,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said on Tuesday.
“He then moves further down the path, sees another female jogger. He slashes her in the neck. He continues to move south and a little east when he encounters a man with a stroller with his 2-year-old son.
“He slashes that man in the chest as the man is attempting to protect his son, and his son is slashed on the arm.”
A bystander, Thomas Ciriacks, 49, jumped into the fray to stop the bloodshed.
He was walking his two dogs when he and Fayette ran to the aid of a screaming woman being attacked by the deranged man.
Ciriacks said the attacker then turned on Fayette, who went back to protect his little boy.
“He had cornered the man with the kid,” Ciriacks said.
“[Fayette] had his kid covered up, and the man was on top of him. He was huddled over his child, protecting his child.
“That guy is a hero,” Ciriacks said.
“He came to this woman’s aid, and he had a child to protect. He’s absolutely a hero.”
A frightened Luke was treated at and released from Roosevelt Hospital. Hours later, a family friend carried him into his Upper West Side home, shielding the bandaged left arm that was injured in the attack.
Also cut were joggers Deanna Koestel, in the back, and Jessica Lipps, in the neck.
Koestel was undergoing surgery, as was Ben Loehnen, who was stabbed in the stomach while walking his dogs.
Graham was taken to Bellevue Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, sources said, and later demanded a lawyer.
“The guy is a f–king nut. He just took a pair of scissors and started stabbing everyone randomly, including a 2- to 3-year-old child,” a law-enforcement source said. “He was running down the [bike] path, going from person to person, stabbing them with a scissors.”
A sanitation worker, Shurita Fields, 51, called 911 and ran to the scene to give one woman first aid.
“I told her to be calm and that we were going to stay with her and she was going to be OK,” Fields said.
Yahoo Local News – New York Post
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