A 37-year-old man working as a security guard in an Apple store in New York City was stabbed multiple times following a dispute over wearing a mask inside the store to comply with Covid-19 safety policies.
New York City police responded to the West 14th Street location in Manhattan at about 6:20 p.m.
The security guard told police he was stabbed one time in the left arm and one time in the forehead with a knife by an unknown man. The man then ran away into a nearby the subway station.
The injured security guard was taken to the hospital in serious but stable condition.
“I saw him come out on the stretcher and I was like ouch,” Kimberly, a young woman who works nearby and knew the security guard in passing, told NBC New York. “Everybody was in a big commotion, crying, everyone was in shock.”
The Apple store closed about two and a half hours early as employees spoke to police officers investigating the incident and collected evidence, NBC New York reported. Workers with a cleaning company arrived later on Friday night to clean the trail of blood that was still left at the store several hours after the stabbing happened.
The investigation remains ongoing, but no one has been arrested in connection to the assault as of Saturday morning, police told NBC News in an email.
