I Swear It’s Safe Here, Ma!

The subway is actually really safe — until some fucking psycho sitting across from you gets up and stabs you in the chest for no apparent reason:

Without apparent provocation, a man sitting in a subway car in Harlem yesterday afternoon suddenly stood up, crossed the aisle and repeatedly thrust a knife into the chest of a 21-year-old tourist from Texas riding with his girlfriend, critically wounding him, the police said.

The tourist, identified by law enforcement officials as Christopher McCarthy, apparently thought at first that he had been punched, the police said, until he realized he was bleeding. By that time, his assailant had left the train at 110th Street and Central Park West. The train, a southbound C, continued to the next station, 103rd Street, before the authorities stopped it. An ambulance then took Mr. McCarthy to a hospital.

The police began an intensive search for the attacker. Witnesses said that he and the victim had exchanged no words before he suddenly lashed out and that the attack did not appear to be part of a robbery. At least four other people were in the car, the last one on the train, at the time, the police said.

The crime — its violent details, its setting in the subway in the middle of the day and its tourist victim — recalled a notorious New York City killing, the murder of Brian Watkins, a visitor from Utah, by a robber in 1990. Mr. McCarthy was in critical condition last night at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center on West 114th Street, where he underwent surgery after being stabbed multiple times in the left side of his chest, the police said.

Mr. McCarthy and his girlfriend, Ganda Krisananuwatara, 20, were on the second day of a planned two-week vacation in New York. “Everyone was so excited,” Ms. Krisananuwatara said in an interview. “They told me to take pictures — now I’ll have the most terrible story when I get back.”