A man accused of stabbing a security guard at a New York City Apple Store on Friday evening is at large, according to police.
The incident occurred “following a dispute over wearing a mask inside the store” located at 401 West 14th Street in Manhattan, police said.
The 37-year-old guard said he was stabbed once in the arm and once in the forehead, the New York Police Department said in a description of the incident that it sent to Newsweek.
The guard was taken to the hospital in non-life-threatening condition, according to the department.
Police said the suspect was “wearing a black sweatshirt with red lettering, blue jeans, and black sneakers.”
Spencer Platt
Following the incident, the suspect “fled on foot into the subway station on West 14th Street and 8th Avenue,” police said.
The department said that no one has been arrested in connection with the crime and that its investigation is ongoing.
Photos posted on the New York Post‘s website following the incident show blood on the floor near a staircase at the bottom of the Apple Store.
Robert Monticello, a witness, heard screams and people “pushing and shoving each other” when he was passing by on Friday evening, the Post reported.
“You don’t expect this on a beautiful day like this. You don’t expect these kinds of things,” Monticello said.
“Why would you hurt somebody else?” he added.
“It really bothered me to see someone getting hurt. That was really not something I wanted to see.”
The New York Daily News reported that after the stabbing, two workers brought the security guard behind the staircase and administered first aid.
“He had a bandage on his stomach,” Paul Shortino, a security worker at a nearby building, told the Daily News.
“The ambulance pulled up and took him out on a stretcher.”
The stabbing in New York City is one of several recent incidents in which police have accused customers of responding to COVID-19 restrictions with violent behavior.
Last week, in Wisconsin, police arrested a man after he allegedly refused to wear a mask inside a restaurant and punched a manager in the face.
In New York City, five tourists from Texas last month reportedly attacked a restaurant hostess who questioned the validity of their COVID-19 vaccination cards.
And in March, a man in Texas allegedly stabbed a manager of a Jack in the Box after being asked to wear a face covering in the restaurant.
