'I got stabbed - and people just stared!' Waitress' bloody tale after West Side subway attack

BY Joe Jackson and John Lauinger
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Monday, September 13th 2010, 4:00 AM

A mugger stabbed a waitress who wouldn't give up her bag on an upper West Side subway platform early Sunday - and initially, no one came to her aid.

"They were just staring," said the 26-year-old waitress, who estimated there were around 20 people on the platform when she was attacked at 2:30 a.m.

"I said, 'I just got stabbed! Call 911! Does anyone know what I should do?' They just stared at me," she recounted from her bed at St. Luke's Hospital, where she was in stable condition with a stab wound to her left side.

The Daily News is withholding the victim's name because her attacker, who fled down Broadway, remains at large.

The victim was heading home to Washington Heights from her shift at a midtown restaurant with a couple of hundred dollars in tips in her purse.

She said she noticed the mugger - a slender, 6-foot-tall black man with short hair - on the No. 2 train heading uptown from Columbus Circle. He had his feet up on another seat, she remembered.

At 96th St. and Broadway, she got off to transfer to the No. 1, and he got off, too.

"He kinda just circled me and showed me his knife. He grabbed my purse and I tried to grab it back. I wanted my purse. I had money, everything in there. I was scared, I wasn't really thinking," she said.

"He stabbed me and I let go," she said. "I don't think I felt anything until he ran off and I pressed on it [the wound] and I was bleeding. I started freaking out."

She called for help, but her fellow straphangers just gaped at her.

It wasn't until she collapsed on the platform, bleeding, that anyone moved to help.

"I was lying down on the platform. There was a girl who came over; she was calming me down, she was nice," the waitress said.

The victim, who was in good spirits and being comforted by her boyfriend, said she was mostly just angry at losing her purse.

"I'm more p---ed off. I really want my bag back. I had a lot of stuff in there, important things like keys, IDs," she said.

"I can't breathe well: It's like someone's standing on my rib cage. But I wouldn't care if I had my bag."

Her boyfriend, Chris Delapaz, 22, held her hand.

"I'm just glad she's okay," he said.

Investigators are reviewing security camera footage for images of the thief, police said.

The waitress, who has lived in New York for four years, hasn't told her family in Hawaii what happened for fear of worrying them.

From: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/09/13/2010-09-13_i_got_stabbed__and_people_just_stared_waitress_bloody_tale_after_subway_attack.html?obref=obinsite