A criminal slashed three elderly people with a machete — while calling himself “Lucifer” — in an unprovoked attack and was fatally shot by cops at Grand Central Terminal Saturday morning, police said.
An 85-year-old man suffered a deep cut across his head, and a 65-year-old man suffered cuts on his head on the 4, 5, 6 subway platform at the iconic station at 9:50 a.m., police said. A 70-year-old woman was slashed in the shoulder, cops said.
Blood-soaked white gauze was wrapped around one victim’s head, photos from the scene show. The slasher was also seen being carried away on a gurney.
Two NYPD detectives, who were working overtime to provide transit security, confronted the 44-year-old, identified as Anthony Griffin, and told him to drop the machete.
“From the top of the stairs, they observed the individual on the platform, and they immediately ordered him to drop the knife,” Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a news conference at the scene. “The individual was armed with a large knife described as a machete and was behaving erratically, repeatedly stating that he was Lucifer.”
Griffin refused to comply “with at least 20 orders to drop the knife,” she said.
Griffin was taken to Bellevue Hospital and was pronounced dead a short time later, cops said.
His prior arrests include one for menacing with a sharp object, police sources said.
The two officers were taken to the hospital for treatment of tinnitus, cops said.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a post on X that he was “grateful to the NYPD for their quick response and for preventing additional violence.”
“The NYPD is conducting an internal investigation and will release body-worn camera footage, as it does in all incidents involving the discharge of an officer’s firearm,” he said.
Claudio Delgado, 53, was in the main hall of Grand Central when the chaos erupted after getting off his train from Connecticut to visit his mother in the hospital.
“I was coming from Connecticut when ‘Boom!’ everyone got down on the floor fast,” the 53-year-old said. “Then the police said, ‘Get outta here! Get outta here fast!’ They said it was somebody with a gun and police were involved too. It’s scary. This is how New York City is now. It’s too much violence in New York City now.”
A worker at the station, who declined to give his name, was also rattled.
“I saw them [paramedics], they came up with somebody on the stretcher, and they were pumping his chest,” he said. “It’s crazy. You could be on the platform minding your business, and someone had a machete, it’s scary, scary, scary.”
Worker Jessica Munoz, who’s employed at the Bourke Street Bakery near the subway entrance, saw people running out of the station at East 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue.
“I was scared, we don’t know what we can do, we just see the people running, and I asked the guy and he said there was a shooting downstairs,” she said. “It’s scary, we didn’t know what we could do. It’s crazy.”
ACCORDING TO NYP
