Man slashed in the face coming out of subway station in Crown Heights

CROWN HEIGHTS, Brooklyn (WABC) -- Authorities are looking for the attacker who slashed a man in the face as he was coming out of a subway station in Brooklyn.

The 38-year-old victim was slashed at the Nostrand Avenue station in Crown Heights just after 11 p.m. Wednesday.

When the A train pulled in to the Nostrand Avenue station Wednesday night and the doors opened, the victim and another passenger both started to step out.

"I told him to go ahead and he said 'oh go ahead', and I stepped out and didn't think anything of it. I honestly couldn't even tell you what he looked like," he said.

The victim, who did not want to be identified, started to walk up the stairs.

"Pretty much close to the top of the stairs, I felt something brush over me; I didn't think anything of it. The guy just ran off. Then people started screaming, 'He cut you, he cut you, he cut you, you're bleeding!' I put my hand on my face ... and I just see all of this blood gushing," he said.

ER doctors closed the wound with several stitches, but the blade came within an inch of important arteries that could have cost him his life.

"If there was a fight and something happened, then at least we have something to go on, but just random slashing, there are sick people out there," a resident said.

On Wednesday morning, a teenage girl in Whitestone, Queens, was slashed in the neck and face as she walked to school by a man she did not know. Police said the two incidents are unrelated.

"You hear it all the time, things like that, but you just think it won't happen to you. But it happens, that's life," the subway-station victim said.

The suspect in the Brooklyn attack was described as 6 feet 2 inches tall with dreadlocks.