A man stabbed two brothers during a heated argument on a Manhattan street Sunday — an attack one witness alleged was in retaliation for a fight a third sibling had with the knifeman a day earlier.
The brothers, aged 24 and 27, clashed with the knife-wielding man outside The Heights Deli & Mini Mart at the corner of W. 190th St. and Audubon Ave. in Washington Heights just after 12:40 p.m., cops said.
The fight stemmed from a beef the day before between the knifeman and the pair’s youngest brother, whose age was not immediately released, according to an employee at the bodega.
“The middle and big brother had the fight today,” said the worker, who asked not to be named. “They’re a good family.”
As the men skirmished, the 24-year-old man was stabbed in the abdomen and the back, and the older brother was knifed in the abdomen, according to cops.
When the knifeman fled west on W. 190th St. on foot, the wounded brothers staggered into the bodega for help.
“The younger brother was bleeding a lot,” said the employee. “He couldn’t stand up after that. He was laying on the floor, bleeding.”
The worker dialed 911 as the victims’ mother arrived at the bodega, her sons bleeding on the floor.
“His mom was crying so bad,” he said. “She thought her son was going to die.”
Police investigate after two brothers were stabbed outside a deli on W. 190th St. and Audubon Ave. in Washington Heights on Sunday afternoon. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
Officers who responded to the scene, along with their distraught mother, applied pressure to the men’s wounds while medics raced to the bodega. Both brothers were taken to Harlem Hospital, where they are expected to survive.
No arrests were made as police worked to locate the suspect.
A bodega employee alleged the suspect and his friends were “troublemakers” in the neighborhood.
“I deal with them all the time in the store,” the exasperated worker claimed. “Fighting, asking for credit, they don’t want to pay.”