‘Quiet’ Restaurant Worker Stabbed on NYC Subway by Grinning Stranger

A hardworking immigrant’s daily commute turned into a nightmare when a smiling stranger suddenly stabbed him on a Queens subway train, leaving him clinging to life in a hospital ICU.

Police say 25-year-old Roberto Gaspar had just finished a grueling shift at a Manhattan restaurant when he boarded the No. 7 train late Sunday night. He was staring down at his phone, minding his own business, when the attacker crept up behind him at the 111th Street station in Corona.

Without a word, the man — caught on surveillance cameras grinning ear to ear — plunged a sharp object into Gaspar’s neck and back before fleeing the train.

“He is serious. He can’t talk,” Gaspar’s close friend Tomas Calel told reporters in Spanish outside the victim’s Queens apartment. “He’s in the ICU. He’s hooked up to machines. The doctors say maybe he’ll talk, maybe. We are hoping.”

Gaspar, originally from Guatemala, has lived in New York for nearly a decade. Friends describe him as quiet, hardworking, and devoted to supporting his family back home. “He didn’t do anything wrong,” Calel said angrily. “Why did [the attacker] do that? He’s laughing in the photo. He doesn’t care what he did to my friend.”

Gaspar’s sister, one of four siblings, rushed to the hospital where she has been “crying a lot” and “scared,” Calel added.

The young worker’s life revolved around his job. He routinely worked ten-hour shifts, five or six days a week, taking on any task — cooking, cleaning, dishwashing — to send money to his parents and three sisters in Guatemala. “He’s a quiet guy. He doesn’t make trouble. He just works and goes home to sleep,” Calel said.

Now, instead of clocking in at the restaurant, Gaspar is fighting for his life on a ventilator at NewYork-Presbyterian/Queens Hospital.

The brazen attack has rattled fellow New Yorkers, already uneasy about a surge of violent incidents in the city’s subway system. According to NYPD data, felony assaults in transit have risen sharply over the past two years, sparking heated debate about safety underground.

For Calel, the statistics feel terrifyingly personal. “Sometimes I take the train at night. I’m afraid now because what happened to him could happen to me too,” he admitted.