Fired East Village Hardware Store Worker Slices Man's Face Open

EAST VILLAGE, NY — A man who was fired from an East Village hardware store returned Sunday and sliced a former co-worker's face open, authorities said Monday.

Police are searching for the 24-year-old suspected slasher who used to work at Basic Plus on Third Avenue and East 12th Street. The man returned with a vengeance at about 7:30 p.m. and argued with a 32-year-old man who still works at the shop, officials said.

A hardware store worker told the Daily News the attacker was "just a hothead" and that he argued with the victim at the store two hours earlier before returning to slash him.

“He got into a fight downstairs with the guy he cut,” the worker told the newspaper. “It was another fist fight. But they squashed it and then he came back again two hours later and said, ‘Yo, we ain’t finished let’s go outside.’ So my boy went outside with him and he cut him up on 10th Street”

The fight took a violent turn when the disgruntled former employee whipped out a knife and sliced the right side of the man's face from his ear to his mouth, a police spokesman said.

The victim ran back into the hardware store and phoned 911.

“My boy came back to the store and told a worker inside to call the cops. I came out from the bathroom and he said, ‘Yo, I’m cut,’” the hardware store worker told the Daily News. “The knife went straight through his mouth. It was from his ear to his lip, like six inches. But it was all open, a big open gash.”

First responders rushed the victim to Bellevue Hospital where he is in stable condition, officials said.

Anyone with information in regards to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).

Photo courtesy of Google Maps street view