A cab driver was slashed in the face this week by three customers whom he offered a free ride.

Mustafa Kadro had been driving through Greenpoint Thursday when three men flagged him down. "They said they only had $10 and they didn't want to go too far," Kadro told the News. "So I told them to get in."

Kadro said he picked up the passengers near Union Avenue and Lorimer Street, and told them not to worry about the fare. With temperatures dipping to a low of 26 degrees, the driver said he didn't want to see them left out in the cold. According to CBS, Kadro drove the three men to North 5th Street and Wythe Avenue, and was attacked just as he was dropping them off. One of the men thanked him, and then pulled a blade from his pocket, reached through the window partition, and slashed his face.

"He was trying to reach his pocket and I said, 'Don't worry about it, you don't have to pay,'" Kadro told the News. The three men fled the scene, but were arrested by police later that night after they allegedly choked and mugged a 25-year-old man only three blocks away. Mario Reyes, 20, Samuel Martinez, 21 and Jose Osoria, 17, have all been charged with robbery. Reyes, who reportedly held the knife that cut Kadro, was also charged with assault.

Kadro told Pix 11 that he had never before been attacked while on the job, and that despite suffering a 4-inch cut to his forehead, he refused medical attention.

"It was three in the morning. My gut feeling was that they were trouble," he told the News, which reports that 672 slashings and stabbings have been recorded by the NYPD in 2016 so far, an increase of 22% over the same period in 2015.