A scissors-wielding madman went on a random stabbing spree in Riverside Park Tuesday, injuring five people — including a toddler and his ballet-dancing dad.
Julius James Graham, 43, a homeless man originally from Texas, was finally wrestled to the ground by cops and a good Samaritan, but not before he had slashed two men, two women and a 2-year-old boy just before 8 a.m., authorities said.
“Around 7:50 a.m., the suspect stabs a woman, a jogger in the back on the running path on Riverside Drive,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
“He then moves further down the path, sees another female jogger. He slashes her in the neck. He continues to move south and a little east when he encounters a man with a stroller with his 2-year-old son.
“He slashes that man in the chest as the man is attempting to protect his son, and his son is slashed on the arm.”
A bystander, Thomas Ciriacks, 49, jumped into the fray to stop the bloodshed.
He was walking his two dogs when he and James Fayette, who was with his young son, Luke, ran to the aid of a screaming woman being attacked by the deranged man.
Ciriacks said the attacker then turned on Fayette, who went back to protect his little boy.
“He had cornered the man with the kid,” Ciriacks said.
“[Fayette] had his kid covered up, and the man was on top of him. He was huddled over his child, protecting his child.
“That guy is a hero,” Ciriacks said.
“He came to this woman’s aid, and he had a child to protect. He’s absolutely a hero.”
Fayette, 42, a former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, was hospitalized with a stab wound to his chest. The injury is not life-threatening, police said.
A frightened Luke was treated at and released from Roosevelt Hospital. Hours later, a family friend carried him into his Upper West Side home, shielding the bandaged left arm that was injured in the attack.
Also cut were joggers Deanna Koestel, in the back, and Jessica Lipps, in the neck.
Koestel was undergoing surgery, as was Ben Loehnen, who was stabbed in the stomach while walking his dogs.
Graham was taken to Bellevue Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, sources said, and later demanded a lawyer.
“The guy is a f–king nut. He just took a pair of scissors and started stabbing everyone randomly, including a 2- to 3-year-old child,” a law-enforcement source said. “He was running down the [bike] path, going from person to person, stabbing them with a scissors.”
A sanitation worker, Shurita Fields, 51, called 911 and ran to the scene to give one woman first aid.
“I told her to be calm and that we were going to stay with her and she was going to be OK,” Fields said.
Additional reporting by Kevin Sheehan and Christina Carrega