Images Of UES Subway Slasher Released: NYPD

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Police released images of a man they claim is connected to three subway knifings at two stations over the weekend — including two at a busy Upper East Side express stop.

Since the attacks on Sunday, police have "surged" police presence inside the subway system, according to NYPD Chief of Transit Michael Kemper.

“We just surged an additional 80-plus police officers into the transit system for an increased presence,” said Kemper, who also praised what he called the department's "quick and powerful" response in a press conference Monday.

On Sunday at about 4:15 p.m., the mayhem began when the man first attacked a 19-year-old woman while she was walking up the mezzanine stairs inside the 86th Street-Lexington Avenue subway station, slashing her right leg with a sharp object from behind, police said.

Moments later, the same man slashed a 48-year-old woman's leg from behind as she stood on a downtown train platform, officials said.

The 19-year-old victim, Hunter College student Bianchelly Diplan, told the New York Daily News that she was en route to pick up a Father's Day cake when she was slashed unprovoked.

“As I’m walking off the stairs, he cuts me in the back of my right leg,” Diplan told the Daily News. “I turn around, and I see him. We made full eye contact. [His face was] blank, like it was nothing.”

“There was no dialogue,” said Kemper at the Monday press conference. “It was without provocation and with no conversation, pre or post.”

Diplan also told the New York Post that she saw the man holding a small knife and that there were no police officers in the busy Upper East Side express station when she was slashed.

“There were no police at the station when I got hurt," Diplan said to the Post. "There needs to be more police and more security cameras. I’m scared for other women and for kids, too. We don’t know what this man is capable of.”

Police say the attacker then rode the 4 train downtown where, just 18 minutes after the Upper East Side attacks, he slashed a 28-year-old woman in the right leg as the train approached the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station.

The third victim was brought to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition, police said.

Meanwhile, the other two women slashed four stops uptown were both brought to New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center in stable condition, officials said.

Diplan said her family rushed to her bedside on Sunday while she received 19 stitches.

“My dad came, my sister, my mom, we were all at the hospital together,” she told the Daily News. “That was the way we celebrated Father’s Day.”

Police statistics show that reported transit crimes are six percent lower than last year.