Police have arrested a man in connection with an apparently random East Village slashing that left the victim with nerve damage in his face. The suspect, Francis Salud, 28, was out on bail for another alleged slashing, and prosecutors claim he wrote about the January 16th East Sixth Street attack in his day planner.
Cops arrested Salud yesterday near his East Fourth Street home after distributing surveillance videos showing a man who resembles him, and they say that during interrogation he showed them the calendar entry that said he "did a buck fifty"—slang for a cut that requires 150 stitches—"on somebody near Third Ave. [ON E. 6th ST.]". The Daily News reports that victim Anthony Christopher-Smith, a social worker from Newark who was on his way to meet a friend at a cafe, did indeed require 150 stitches for wounds to his face and back.
"There was no conversation; no anything beforehand. It just happened out of the blue—the damn strangest thing," Christopher-Smith told CBS2.
He previously said he was wearing earbuds when Salud threw him against the wall, yelled, "F--- off! I’m sick of this s--t!" and sliced him.
Francis Salud (NYPD)
Christopher-Smith told reporters that doctors said he may regain the ability to smile in six months, but that he has lost feeling in one ear-lobe. "But that is a small price to pay," he told the News.
He described Salud as "deranged," and the NYPD's chief of detectives for Manhattan, William Aubry, said Salud has "a psychiatric history."
Salud is already facing a felony assault and a weapon possession charge for allegedly slashing a man on October 18th, over a cigarette in a courtyard outside of Bellevue Hospital, Aubry said. Salud was released from custody on $30,000 bond. At his arraignment today, prosecutors argued he should be held without bail.
"He is a danger to quite literally anyone he happens to pass on the street," Assistant District Attorney Gregory Sangermano said in court.
Salud's latest charges are assault with intent to seriously injure and assault with intent to disfigure, both felonies. Each carries as many as 25 years in prison.
Salud's Legal Aid attorney could not immediately be reached through the group's press office.
