A man shocked the breakfast crowd at a Queens McDonald’s Tuesday when he strolled in with a knife stuck in his back while chatting on a cellphone.
Andrew Hardy, 53, his shirt drenched in blood, appeared remarkably composed as he paced about the Jamaica restaurant at around 10 a.m., witnesses said.
“He was cool and calm. But you could tell he was shaken up,” said Hardy’s pal, Michel Green, 43, of Jamaica. “I went to pull the knife out, but someone said, ‘No, no! It might have hit an artery!’ ”
Another customer said Hardy seemed to be saying his final goodbyes on his cellphone.
“I’m pretty sure he was on the phone talking to somebody in his family or a loved one,” witness Tromaine Yancey told WCBS/Channel 2. “He was talking to them and telling them it might be the last time he’s speaking to them, he just wanted them to hear his voice.”
Yancey said worried fast-food patrons put down their Egg McMuffins to keep Hardy steady on his feet until medics could arrive.
“Everybody was standing there to make sure he didn’t fall backwards on the knife,” she said.
Hardy was knifed a few minutes earlier when he tried to break up a mob of men hurling glass bottles at each other on Sutphin Boulevard near 91st Street, sources said. The brawl was just two blocks from the busy Jamaica Station commuter hub, which was bustling with Long Island Rail Road, subway and AirTrain riders.
A small crowd watched Hardy stumble around outside before he entered the fast-food restaurant.
“The next thing we know, there [Hardy] goes, telling me he’s got a knife in his back,” said Green.
“He came to me. He said, ‘Mike, man, I was stabbed in the back, man.’ He was scared, he was shaking.”
Hardy was rushed to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, and, incredibly, released later in the day.
He told The Post Tuesday night that he was attacked from behind and was just glad that he survived.
“I’m blessed to be alive,” Hardy said outside his mother’s home in Jamaica. “It was just a fight and it escalated into something bigger. They hit me from behind, so I couldn’t see them — but I have an idea who it was.”
“They could have killed him,” his mother, Alice Hardy, 78, told The Post. “I had just come from a funeral — and when I got the call about him, I thought I’d have to go to another!”
Hardy, who lives on and off with his mother, is “a good guy,” Green said. “He just does a little drinking, that’s it. He doesn’t bother nobody. He’s not a troublemaker. He does not get in any trouble.”
The man who stabbed Hardy was wearing a white shirt, according to police sources. Cops had made no arrests on Tuesday night.
Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton, Natalie O’Neill and Kenneth Garger