Real "New York Ripper"

[kpropain]

Bronx slasher loose

Silent savage attacks church teacher and hard-luck teenager

BY TAMER EL-GHOBASHY, DEREK ROSE and DAVE GOLDINER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS


A crazed thug wielding a box cutter viciously slashed a high school honor student and a beloved Sunday school teacher in front of her Bronx church yesterday - sending a wave of terror through the neighborhood.
The burly madman escaped after cutting the 17-year-old orphan's wrist and slicing the 65-year-old grandmother's neck in apparently random attacks several blocks apart.

"[He] cut me, pastor! [He] cut me!" trembling Elida Quezada told the Rev. Ruben Diaz Sr. as she screamed for help just steps from the Christian Community Neighborhood Church on Longfellow Ave. in West Farms.

The silent attacker never demanded money - and cops have no idea why he targeted Quezada and high school junior Angelique Melendez.

"I want to know why he did it," said Angelina Melendez, the teen's grandmother.

"Who could do that to someone like this?" asked Quezada's granddaughter, Sandra Fernandez, 15.

Quezada and Angelique, who live across the street from one another, were slated to undergo surgery at Lincoln Hospital last night. Doctors said both are expected to recover.

"We're all in panic," said Diaz, who also is a state senator. "We're going to have to live in fear."

The bloody spree ignited at 12:20 on a sunny afternoon, when Angelique Melendez noticed a man following her as she walked down Bryant Ave. to an aunt's house.

The 11th-grader, a straight-A student and aspiring news photographer, asked the stranger what he was doing, and he started punching her, cops said.

When she put up her arms to ward off his blows, he slashed her with the box cutter and ran.

Just 20 minutes later and two blocks away, Quezada was walking to church, where she was to teach Sunday school during the 1 p.m. service.

The man walked up to her and, without warning, slashed her, opening a deep wound from below her left ear to her chin.

"He didn't want money," said Fernandez. "He just sliced her and kept running."

Bleeding and screaming for help, the terrified grandmother of five stumbled toward the church. Diaz and his wife, Leslie, tried to stanch the bleeding with towels and handkerchiefs.

"You could see the fear in her face," Leslie Diaz said. "There's very sick people in the world. Something has to be done."

Quezada, a home health attendant from the Dominican Republic, suffered damage to her salivary glands.

Her grandson could not believe anyone would be evil enough to set upon the harmless churchgoer, who often helps him with his homework. "My heart got cold," said Yassell Garcia, 17. "I felt something cold in my chest."

Yassell was visiting his grandmother in the hospital when he discovered he also knew Angelique from their block.

The anguish also ran deep for Angelique, who cannot move her fingers and will need extensive surgery to repair slashed tendons in her wrist. The popular student at the High School of Graphic Communication Arts in Manhattan lost both her mother and father to illness in recent years.

"She suffered a lot, but it didn't break her," said Juan Matos, 48, her uncle. "She has a strong will."

Angelique juggles school, a job at White Castle and helping her ailing grandmother, who is rearing the teen and her four siblings. Now, the confident girl must overcome another obstacle - fear of the violent lunatic on the loose.

"She's scared," said Edwin Melendez, 45, another uncle. "She's talking about not going out by herself again."

Cops could describe the attacker only as a black man in a black jacket, about 5-feet-10 and 200 pounds. No weapon was recovered.

Church musician Norberto Gervaez, 52, said the twin attacks stoked fear in the working-class neighborhood. "We've got a lot of crazy people on the street today," said Gervaez. "This could happen anywhere."