A registered sex offender was arrested Wednesday for an unprovoked anti-gay slashing on a Manhattan subway train, police said Tuesday.
Milton Hamlin, 46, is facing assault as a hate crime and menacing charges for the Friday night attack on a 27-year-old man seated on an uptown A train approaching 34th St.-Penn Station, cops said.
The victim was seated with his husband when Hamlin stormed up to them with a box cutter in his hand, cops were told.
“F—ing gay motherf—er!” Hamlin screamed as he lunged at the victim, according to cops.
The victim, a Bronx resident, raised his hand to deflect the attack but Hamlin allegedly cut into his hand, slicing the skin between the thumb and forefinger, cops said.
The victim and his husband got off the train at Penn Station and reported the incident to an Amtrak police officer. Medics took the victim to Bellevue Hospital, where he was treated and released. He needed four stitches to close the gash.
Hamlin, who also lives in the Bronx, remained on the train and got away, according to cops.
The NYPD on Saturday released a cellphone image of the suspect in the hopes someone recognized him. Police tracked a photo of Hamlin down using facial recognition, which the victim and a witness positively identified as the attacker, NYPD Lt. John Russo said at a news briefing Tuesday.
“They were acting like every other couple on the train,” Russo said of the victim and his husband. “They were together and for whatever reason Milton Hamlin took exception.”
Cops tracked Hamlin down to a Bronx apartment Monday morning. He has an extensive criminal history with 11 arrests, mostly for grand larceny and robbery, police said.
He was added to the state’s sex offender registry in 2012 after he was convicted of attempting to lure a 16-year-old boy he knew into his home or car so he could sexually abuse the teen, according to court records. He served 19 months in prison before he was released in July 2013. He also served 17 months in prison beginning in April 2007 for assault, records show.
His arraignment for the anti-gay assault was pending in Manhattan Criminal Court Tuesday.
The attack comes as the NYPD is fighting a 16% jump in assaults at city subway stops and trains.
As of Sunday, the city has seen 97 assaults in the subway system this year, 13 more than by this time last year. There were three murders in the city subways in the first two months of the year, cops said.
Recent subway assaults include a bloody scene in Brooklyn when a commuter slashed MTA conductor Alton Scott in the neck as the 59-year-old MTA employee stuck his head out of the conductor’s window at the Rockaway Ave. station in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
