Man, 33, left with punctured lung after being stabbed in the back by thug at Yankees Stadium

An unhinged thug stabbed a gay man in the back at the Yankee Stadium subway stop in New York City in what the victim believes was a hate crime as violence surges more than 55 percent compared to last year.

The victim Leo Frasier, 33, said that he was returning from work to his Bronx home and headed up the escalator to transfer trains when the shirtless man, who appeared to be in his late teens or early 20s leaned into him.

The assailant, whose pants were falling down with his underwear hanging out, was bent over in front of Frasier at first but then straightened up and turned to confront him.

Speaking to DailyMail.com, Frasier said: ‘He leaned into my personal space, saying he wanted to make sure that I didn’t take a picture of him. 

‘Here he was homophobic and I was, like, I didn’t take a photo of you. It was hot, I was tired and I was, like, I’m not the one.’

Frasier said to deter the man, he gestured that he had a weapon in his pocket.

Here is the unhinged assailant fleeing the subway station near Yankee Stadium after attacking a gay man

The attacker, pictured here, stabbed Leo Frasier, 33, in the Yankee Stadium subway station, puncturing his lung

The NYPD’s Transit District 11 is located in the 161st Street-Yankee Stadium stop where the attack took place

The man went to the top of the escalator and ducked off to the left and waited for his victim to come off.

As Frasier walked to his connection on the four train, he caught a reflection of the attacker coming at him from behind.

Frasier ducked and swung his bag around at the young man and caught him in the neck.

That’s when he felt the piercing pain of the stabbing on the left side of his back.

‘Someone yelled, ‘He’s bleeding,’ Frasier said. ‘There was so much blood. I heard a cracking sound and the doctors said that was my lung being punctured.’ 

Frasier told DailyMail.com that he believes that his attacker knew that he is gay and that’s why he was targeted.

‘Even if I don’t parade my homosexuality, he assumed that I am gay,’ he said in an interview from his hospital bed.

‘The doctors said that if I was standing upright, I would have died. That’s what pisses me off,’ he said. 

Now, Frasier, who turns 34 tomorrow, will be spending his birthday in the hospital as doctors evaluate his progress.

‘My boyfriend and I were going to do something,’ he said. ‘But now I’m going to be here.’

Surveillance video caught the attacker fleeing down the escalator and through the subway station without his shirt on, wearing shorts and sneakers with black socks. 

No arrests have been made, according to cops.

Frasier said that he would like to see more cops better deployed through out the subway system.

‘I do appreciate that they wanted to put more cops in the train station. If they had more cops, this probably wouldn’t happen,’ he said.

The NYPD’s Transit District 11 is located in that subway station, but Frasier said that the cops were usually only around the precinct office.

The attack comes as the city sees crime spiking a whopping 57 percent on the subways in July across the five boroughs since last year.

Prior to her death, Go (pictured) was an executive manager at Deloitte Consulting, according to her LinkedIn. Her death shocked New York City residents and prosecutors from the District Attorney’s office previously claimed that Simon was motivated by racial bias against Go, who was Asian American

Murders and shootings have decreased slightly in the hot summer in the Big Apple, but felony assault, like the kind Frazier said he experienced, jumped 19 percent. Rapes are up nearly 11 percent, robbery, which involves violence or the threat of violence, rose an eye-popping 39.4 percent.

Overall, New York City crime surged 36.7 percent, according to the NYPD.

Sometimes the victims are barely in their teens.

On July 9,14-year-old Ethan Reyes was stabbed to death in Harlem at the 137th Street – City College subway stop by a 15-year-old from a rival gang.

The New York Times reported that fear has gripped the subway system after a reporter rode the A train, the city’s longest line, for a day.

‘I don’t feel safe on the trains,” Jo-Ann Jones, of Harlem told the paper. “I’m afraid to go out after 8 o’clock. 

Ridership on the city’s subways has dropped 56.2 percent on the weekdays.

Nina Rothchild, 58, spoke out for the first time since she was pushed down a flight of stairs and hit in the head 13 times with a hammer at a subway station in Queens, New York, in February

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former NYPD lieutenant, made cleaning up crime a central part of his administration’s platform.

He’s promised to deploy more police in the stations, but so far it has not proven effective.

Adams has placed the blame on the crime wave on the 2019 criminal justice reform, that prohibited bail for misdemeanors and some felony crimes.

He has pressed lawmakers in Albany and Gov. Kathey Hochul to change the law to give judges the discretion to withhold bail if the defendant could be a danger to the community.

So far, lawmakers have ignored his request.

From the beginning of the year, the New York City subway has seen some shocking, brutal and senseless crimes.

January saw one of the biggest increase, nearly doubling the year before, with 198 crimes reported compared to 113 in the first month last year.

That was the month when Deloitte analyst Michelle Go was pushed to her death under a Times Square train by a homeless man with a history of mental illness. 

The suspect Martial Simon, 61, also had a violent criminal history. He served two years for robbing taxi drivers at gunpoint. 

A defiant Frank Abrokwa, 37, is pictured showing a rude hand gesture as he is led into Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday for violating the conditions of his release 

After the killing, the newly inaugurated Mayor Eric Adams made safety in the subway system a top priority, holding a press conference in the Times Square station in February. He promised that he would beckon riders back and clear out homeless people using the commuter system for shelter.

 Days after his announcement, six people were stabbed in the system, and a city Health Department scientist Nina Rothschild, 58, was pushed down the stairs in a Queens subway station and beaten 13 times in the head with a hammer. 

Career criminal William Blount, 57, was arrested for the attack on Rothschild after he was found with the city worker’s credit cards and NYC ID. He was charged with attempted murder, robbery and assault.

 Rothschild suffered a skull fracture in the attack, but was expected to recover. 

Also in February, a man upset that his sexual advances had been rebuffed on a Bronx subway platform, defecated in a plastic bag then smeared it on the head and face of the woman he had hit on.

 Frank Abrokwa, 37, got away from the scene of that disgusting crime, but he was nabbed later for throwing a dumbbell through the window of a storage facility where he kept his belongings.

It also came to light that Abrokwa had punched a spit at an Orthodox man in Crown Heights on March 2 in an unprovoked attack that prosecutors are considering a hate crime.

Later in March, in an echo of the attack on the city health worker, a 29-year-old Asian man was beaten with a hammer in a 14th Street subway  

Six-foot-two Christian Jeffers, 48, who identifies as female, pulled the tool from her bag on March 9 and struck the victim in the head, asking ‘Why the f—- you hit me?’ though it appears the violence was unprovoked.

Another hate crime occurred on a northbound A train on March 19 when an unhinged assailant attacked and beat a gay man, according to cops.

‘The suspect began spitting at a 22 Y/O male [victim] before attacking him & ripping out his hair while making anti-gay remarks,’ according to the NYPD. 

Criminal justice reforms, like a limit on the discretion of judges to impose pre-trial incarceration have been blamed and a decriminalization of petty crimes like shoplifting, have been blamed for the crime wave.

District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who took office in January, announced in his ‘day-one memo’ that certain gun crimes would not be prosecuted.

On March 23, a 14-year-old boy was punched repeatedly by a gang of attackers at a Brooklyn train station.

The teen was in the Van Siclen Avenue station in East New York when the gang unleashed a brutal series of head and body blows. 

Video of the attack show the youth try to protect himself against the violent mugging.

 On April 5, a commuter on a northbound 4 train got into an argument with another man who slashed him in the neck with a boxcutter.

A man had his neck slashed with a boxcutter on the subway on Tuesday morning in the latest frightening act of violence in New York City. 

NYPD officials say the victim, in his forties, was traveling on a northbound 4 train when he and another man got into an argument.

Adam’s ‘holistic’ plan for combatting crime, which unveiled in February with Gov. Kathy Hochul at his side, seems to have a limited affect on the chaos.

He proposed 30 ‘Joint Response Teams’ made up of mental health workers, cops and community organizers to address poverty, homelessness and crime. He, with funding from Hochul, promised to increase shelter and mental health beds available.

Under his plan the Metropolitan Transportation Authority would force all subway occupants off the trains at the end of the line for cleaning.

At least six people were stabbed on NYC subways after NYC Mayor Eric Adams announced his new Subway Safety Plan

 At least six people were stabbed over the weekend in the New York City’s crime-ridden subway system, which has seen close to 300 violent incidents so far this year, despite city and state leaders’ efforts to curb the bloodshed.

The first of the half-dozen attacks took place just hours after New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a crackdown on rampant crime and homelessness in the sprawling transit system.  

A 31-year-old victim was on a southbound 6 train approaching Canal Street at 6.10 p.m. on Sunday when police say a stranger plunged a knife twice into his arm without any apparent provocation. 

The attacker remained on the train as it continued on its way to Brooklyn, while the victim got off at the Canal Street station, where photographs showed his blood staining walls and floors. 

The knifed man, who has not been named, was transported to Bellevue Hospital was listed in stable condition. 

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Bloody Sunday: A stabbing victim’s blood stains the wall and floor at the Canal Street station in Manhattan on Sunday night 

Police say the 31-year-old victim was riding a southbound 6 train when he was attacked without any provocation by a knife-wielding stranger, who stabbed him twice in the arm 

Police officers are seen investigating at the scene of Sunday’s stabbing, which capped off a violent weekend in the city’s sprawling subway system 

Police say the suspect, who fled, was last seen wearing a colorful vest over a grey hoodie. He has not been arrested as of Monday 

A police officer emerges from the No 6 Canal Street Station on Sunday, following the random stabbing that sent the victim to the hospital in stable condition 

The suspect, believed to be a man in his 30s, was described as wearing a colorful vest over a gray hoodie. He has not been arrested as of Monday morning. 

Sunday’s incident capped off a violent weekend, which saw at least five other people assaulted in the subway system in a span of 48 hours. 

On Friday evening – just hours after Adams and Hochul unveiled a new subway safety plan – a man was slashed in the forearm at the Briarwood subway station in Queens and was hospitalized in stable condition, reported NBC New York. 

At around 3 a.m. on Saturday, a 46-year-old homeless man was stabbed multiple times in the thigh and buttocks during a robbery attempt at Jamaica station in queens

About 12 hours later, a man punched a 20-year-old woman on the 3 train platform at Livonia and Van Siclen Avenue in Brooklyn. An argument ensued, during which police say the male attacker pulled out a knife and stabbed the woman three times in the abdomen. The victim was hospitalized in stable condition.

At around 8.30 p.m. on Saturday, a 24-year-old man was standing on the A-C-E platform in the 168th Street station in Manhattan when police say he was stabbed by two teens during a botched robbery attempt.

About 30 minutes later, another man was riding a southbound train in Morningside Heights in Manhattan when he was knifed after asking a stranger to stop smoking.

According to the latest data from the New York City Police Department, since the beginning of the year, there have been 276 instances of crime in the subway system,  which represent a 65 percent increase compared to the same period in 2021.   

New York City subway stabbings and slashings have spiked 29 percent in the last last year, with 182 incidents compared to 141 a year before in 2020. 

And 2022 is squaring up to be even worse. So far this year, there have been 27 subway attacks on passengers – a 35 per cent increase on the 20 reported for the same period of 2021.

Then on Monday, Kyle Westby, 42, was attacked on his way home just after midnight.  

Westby was coming back from a late dinner out with his girlfriend when he arrived at the Prospect Heights station and saw two men, one of whom asked ‘Why are you staring at me,’ the New York Post reports.  

‘I saw him reach into his jacket and pull out  a brown object,’ Westby told the Post. ‘He swung at me, and I ran away, so I ran up the stairs and thank God the cops were there.

‘I said ‘Officers, this man swung at me with an ax.’ Immediately, they went down and apprehended him.’

Police report they took Robert Griffith, 58, into custody following the attack, and charged him with attempted assault, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon, saying Griffith also allegedly had a punch dagger and screwdriver. 

Hours later, Evelina Rivera, a 30-year-old chef, was struck by a homeless man wielding a metal pole on her way home from her shift.

She was on her way home on a No. 4 train heading to the Bronx at 2.39am when a homeless man, who had earlier poured honey over himself, asked her and another female passenger: ‘Oh would you guys just shut the f*** up?’

‘We’re like, ‘Anyway,’ and we keep talking, and he’s like ‘I’ll make you shut up,’ she told the Post. 

At that point, she said, the man tried to strike the other woman, ‘misses her by a millimeter’ and instead broke the subway window, as the would-be victim used pepper spray to blind him.

Unable to see, Rivera said, the man started swinging wildly and ‘hit me so hard the ball came out of my [septum] piercing. It’s crooked.’ 

Rivera said she was ‘about to have a panic attack’ following the attack, and she and the other woman got off at the next stop to report the incident to police.