MR. CLEAN: Maintenance man Pedro Toruno mops up the grisly remains yesterday. (Laura Cavanaugh)
STAIN ALIVE: Scottish tourists delight in New York’s gritty street culture on Sunday. (N.Y. Post: Tara Palmeri)
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About bloody time!
A Manhattan maintenance man armed with a dirty mop and a jug of soapy water yesterday finally cleaned up a sidewalk bloodstain left from when cops fatally shot a knife-waving man near Times Square on Saturday.
“I cleaned it up because the management told me to,” a harried super for the building at 501 Seventh Ave., in front of which the stain had stayed for a couple days, said to The Post.
The actual dirty work fell to maintenance man Pedro Toruno, who vigorously scrubbed the stained patch of sidewalk at Seventh and 37th Street.
The spot had turned into a gory tourist attraction after Saturday’s shooting in which knife-wielding psycho Darrius Kennedy, 51 (inset), was killed in a hail of police bullets.
Sources yesterday identified the cops who fired their weapons as Michael Massett, 41, and Peter Rogers, 33, of the Midtown South precinct.
European tourists and New Yorkers alike had gaped at the bloody reminder of the standoff between the cop partners, dozens of their fellow armed officers and the menacing Kennedy — who had a history of mental illness and threatening cops.
Europeans had posed for pictures of themselves standing next to Kennedy’s blood, saying they’d bring the macabre mementos home to show their friends.
But other passersby griped that neither the city nor the NYPD had done anything to clean up the lurid mess, showing a lack of respect for the victim and sullying the squeaky-clean new image of the Crossroads of the World.
Neither the city nor the cops responded yesterday to questions about why the blood wasn’t cleaned up in the immediate aftermath of Saturday’s shooting.
Ex-con Kennedy had pulled an 11-inch IKEA kitchen knife on a female officer after she spotted him toking on a joint near the NYPD’s recruiting station at Seventh and 44th Street.
The madman yelled, “Shoot me! Shoot me!” as he backpedaled on foot down Seventh Avenue with two dozen cops — their pistols trained on him — closing in.
After the 4-minute, low-speed pursuit, Massett and Rogers opened fire as the pot-fried perp lunged at them with his weapon.
They squeezed off a total of 12 rounds, nine of which hit Kennedy, sources said yesterday. He was struck six times in the front of his torso, three times in the back, two times in the upper left arm and once in each thigh.
Neither officer could be reached for comment yesterday. But it wasn’t the first time Massett came face-to-face with a deadly threat in Times Square.
Massett was hailed as a hero by then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani in March 1999 after the 18-year veteran herded pedestrians to safety just before metal debris fell from high atop One Times Square and plummeted to the ground.
Massett said at the time that he was “screaming at the top of my lungs” as he and fellow cops cleared the area, which was teeming with tourists, shoppers and office workers during the 1:16 p.m. incident.
The three women were struck by a 15-foot metal rod but cheated death as heavier debris missed them by inches.
Giuliani had said Massett saved the lives of the three women because they moved out of the way just in time.
“They came within inches of dying,” the mayor had said.
A billboard sign advertising cell phones was torn loose by the stiff March winds and flapped like a flag, tearing lighting fixtures and support posts loose.
The women were rushed to Bellevue Hospital, where a spokeswoman said they were grateful for their quick rescue.
“They thank God for the cop,” she said.
Additional reporting by Tara Palmeri