Take the Aaaahhh! Train

Take the Aaaahhh! Train

Right after all those revamped subway routes were opened last weekend, New Yorkers did their part not only to celebrate the reconfigured service, but also to put the lie to all those stories about falling subway crime rates.

On the afternoon of Saturday, Feb. 21, a rider on the J train in Brownsville shouted, less than enigmatically, "Chinese no good!" at a 53-year-old Asian man before dousing him with pepper spray and fleeing the train.

Later that evening, a young man riding the 3 train in Crown Heights got into a verbal dispute with several others. What started the words flying is unclear, but whatever it was, it was enough (in some minds at least) to justify shooting the young man in the leg and stabbing him in the head. He's currently recovering.

Around the same time, 16-year-old Ryan Jimenez made the mistake of asking the big creepy guy on the crowded 2 train why he was staring at him. To answer his question, the guy began throwing punches. The two began wrestling, and when the doors opened at the next stop, they rolled out onto the platform in proper Every Which Way but Loose fashion. In the end, Jiminez received multiple cuts on his head, neck and back, but was more or less okay.

And in an unrelated incident only a few hours after that, a 20-year-old in the Bronx who hadn't even gotten the chance to get on the 4 train yet was cut all to hell by two guys with box cutters who apparently chose him at random.

There were a few rare non-subway crimes this week, too.

One thing you can count on with violent criminals: If they don't have a gun, a butcher knife or a box cutter, they're gonna turn to the machete. After all, there's always one around. That's what Brooklyn resident Horsone Moore remembered on Feb. 23. He and his girlfriend weren't getting along, so after he whacked her a few times with a baseball bat, he grabbed the machete. Then he turned on the gas and threatened to blow everything sky-high.

After neighbors smelled the gas and called the fire department, Moore barricaded himself in the apartment, holding the woman hostage.

During the hour-long standoff, the woman slipped away somehow, and cops tasered Moore, who was threatening to chop off his own head. Yes?chop off his own head. He's now being charged with reckless endangerment, assault and unlawful imprisonment.

Ex-con Timothy Smith lost his nut after fighting with his girlfriend too, but instead of terrorizing her, he chose to terrorize the other tenants of his Upper East Side apartment complex. He stormed out of his apartment in his pajama bottoms and stalked the halls, ranting and raving and waving a knife about. He did this long enough for neighbors to call the cops.

Before they arrived, though, he kicked his way into a 28th-floor apartment, waved the knife at the residents, then threw a cell phone and laptop out the window. When the cops arrived, he tried to retrieve the laptop.