Man Stabbed in T Stop

A man was stabbed several times in the back on the platform of the Harvard Square T station before running into the Citizens Bank on JFK Street for help late Thursday evening, police said.

The man was rushed to the hospital but did not suffer any life-threatening injuries, said Cambridge Police Department (CPD) spokesman Frank T. Pasquarello.

According to Pasquarello, the incident occurred around 9:30 p.m. on Thursday evening, when the victim was attacked by two male suspects, who stabbed him repeatedly on the station platform.

“After he got stabbed he went into the bank looking for help,” said Pasquarello.

Annie K. Grayson ’09 said that she and two friends were walking down JFK Street past the Citizens Bank when they saw the victim lying face down on the ground in the bank—only moments after he had escaped the T station—surrounded by a flurry of police and firemen.

“I looked in the window and there was a guy lying down on his stomach with what looked like a knife wound in his lower back,” she said. “It looked bad.”

Grayson, who described the victim as a relatively nondescript middle-aged white male with brown hair who was wearing jeans, said that despite his wound, he was still moving and responsive to police.

“There were fire trucks, two ambulances, and all of these people crowded around the Citizens Bank,” she said. “There were medics all around him.”

Eugene B. Cone ’09, who left his room in Mower for the scene of the crime after seeing coverage of the stabbing on Fox 25 News, said that he saw police officers conducting an investigation inside the Harvard Square Citizens Bank.

“There were two transit-authority cars and a cop SUV outside with flashing lights, and several cops inside the ATM room,” Cone, who is also a Crimson editor, wrote in an e-mail. “When we were walking by they were mostly done, but they were picking up a horizontally striped sweater with a small blood stain on it and placing it into a brown Home Depot paper bag while someone else was taking pictures.”

Because the stabbing took place on the subway platform, it is being investigated by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Transit Police, said Pasquarello, who declined to give any more information about the incident.

[On Monday, the day that this article was published, Pasquarello wrote in an e-mail that the CPD, not the transportation authority, would investigate the case.]

Repeated requests for comment from the MBTA press office were not returned, although one MBTA Transit Police officer, who refused to give his full name, told The Crimson Thursday night that the investigation is actually being conducted by CPD.

Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) spokesman Steven G. Catalano said that HUPD was not involved in the investigation.

“We were aware of [the incident],” Catalano wrote in an e-mail. “The Transit Police and CPD are investigating it.”

Neither Pasquarello nor the MBTA Police would comment any further on a motive or relation between the suspect and the victim, or on the investigation of the incident.

—Staff writer Anna M. Friedman contributed to the reporting of this article.                
—Staff writer Reed B. Rayman can be reached at rrayman@fas.harvard.edu.