A 19-year-old Australian tourist was stabbed multiple times in a McDonald\u2019s Monday morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The incident happened around 2 a.m. at the fast-food restaurant on 8th Avenue, near Penn Station. The location is open 24 hours and has security guards on duty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police said the attack was unprovoked and 25-year-old Juan Mercedes, of Port Charlotte, Florida, has been arrested in connection with the stabbing and charged with assault.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Residents who live nearby said they were shocked to hear about the violence so close to the transit hub.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m absolutely sickened by all these random stabbings all around the city. I hate coming to Penn Station,\u201d said Ellen, an Upper East Side resident. \u201cI do it very rarely and as little as possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
She partially blamed the nation\u2019s ongoing mental health crisis for the violence saying, \u201csomebody doesn\u2019t just go randomly stab somebody unless there\u2019s something wrong with them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some New Yorkers who travel to and from work through Penn Station, along with tourists, said more officers on the streets would help them feel safer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s the entrance to the C, the M34 is right there, a whole lot of public transit runs right through here. I think during, around those stops it could be pretty helpful for them to have kind of more of a presence,\u201d Julian Muncan said. \u201cThis is a very high tourist area.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tourist Natalia Wojcaichowska added that \u201cyou need to be aware of your surroundings.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite the stabbing, crime statistics from the NYPD shows assaults in the Midtown South precinct are down about 5% from this time last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police said the investigation into the stabbing remains ongoing.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 19-year-old Australian tourist was stabbed multiple times in a McDonald\u2019s Monday morning.\u00a0 The incident happened around 2…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[10015,387,25,303,75,84,83,9,24,12,63,1174,308,27,200],"class_list":["post-323903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-app-crime","tag-app-public-safety","tag-app-top-stories","tag-crime","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-olivia-leach","tag-public-safety","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}