A woman allegedly slashed and stabbed by a man charged with rampaging through their Queens neighborhood, attacking police and residents, spoke to NY1 about the assault. NY1's Michael Herzenberg filed the following report.
Berta Carpio was slashed in the face and stabbed in the back of her head as she walked to pick up her son from church.
"I'm thankful to God that I'm OK, that I'm alive," she said through an interpreter.
Carpio had just left her apartment on 36th Street near Astoria boulevard when she says a man identified by police as James Dillon asked, "What are you looking at?", cursed, threw a rock at her and then attacked her with a knife.
"When he cut me here, I didn't notice, but when he cut me here at the back of my head, I felt and I saw the blood. I saw my hand had blood," she said through an interpreter.
Others in the neighborhood say they have had run-ins with Dillon, who also lives on the block.
"Our encounters on the block have been very tense and menacing," said one person in the neighborhood. "Just the way he looks at me and the things that he would say, spew very foul language towards me and my child."
Hours after the slashing, police say Dillon stabbed the owner of a liquor store.
Dillon also allegedly used an accelerant and lit a man in his 60s on fire. That victim was said to be in stable condition at a hospital, but the liquor store owner, 55-year-old George Pathouhas, died. He was also the landlord for apartments above.
"Unbelievable, because that guy, he talks to everybody, he knows everybody," said one person in the neighborhood. "I'm in shock."
Police fired as many as 20 rounds to take Dillon down. Investigators say he had just tried to burglarize a nearby apartment, and they say he wasn't giving up, wouldn't drop the knife or the beer bottle filled with an accelerant he actually tossed at two officers, burning their hands.
Police shot the suspect several times. He was taken to the hospital with critical injuries.