Two masked men caused chaos in Brooklyn Tuesday morning when they tried—and failed—to steal a delivery driver’s moped. Their botched robbery ended with two people stabbed and both suspects on the run.
It all went down around 9:30 a.m. near the corner of 36th Street and Fifth Avenue. A 25-year-old delivery worker from Venezuela was just doing his job when the two men pulled up on a red motorcycle and confronted him. They demanded his moped and the keys, but he wasn’t having it.
Pedro Saavedra, a 56-year-old who works at the Shell gas station on the corner, saw the whole thing. “One of the robbers had a knife,” he said. “He came off the bike and kept shouting, ‘Give me the motorcycle, give me the keys.’”
When the delivery driver refused, things got ugly. The robbers attacked, stabbing him in the arm. At some point, one of the suspects dropped his phone, and a fight broke out between the men.
“The robber pushed the guy, and the guy fell along with the motorcycle,” Saavedra explained. “The handle was broken, but the bike was still running.”
That’s when a 34-year-old bystander stepped in, hoping to help. Unfortunately, the attackers turned their knives on him too, cutting him in the back and leg before fleeing the scene. Both men—dressed in black masks, black sweaters, and blue jeans—took off and haven’t been caught yet.
The delivery driver and the good Samaritan were rushed to NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn. Thankfully, their injuries are not life-threatening, though Saavedra believes his quick thinking saved the delivery worker’s life. “If I didn’t put a tourniquet on his arm, he wouldn’t have made it. He was losing so much blood,” Saavedra said. “New York… too many problems.”
This wasn’t the only stabbing in the city that day. Just hours earlier, around 5 a.m., a 37-year-old man was attacked in Greenwich Village at the corner of MacDougal and Bleecker streets. A mugger demanded money and tried to snatch his wallet, but the victim fought back. During the scuffle, the suspect stabbed him in the back and fled.
The injured man was taken to Bellevue Hospital and is expected to recover. Like the Brooklyn case, no arrests have been made.
Both incidents are under investigation, and police are asking anyone with information to come forward.
