A teenager's thumb was severed during a machete attack yesterday afternoon. A group of boys thought that Robert Bell had stolen a cell phone (the papers report the gang was mistaken), and when Bell left summer school in the Bronx, the gang hit him with a baseball bat and then slashed his left hand. One person had walked by the bleeding Bell and didn't really react, "I thought [the thumb] was fake. That's why I didn't pay it any mind." The gang ran away, and Bell was taken to a hospital for surgery to reattach the thumb.
There had been a machete murder on a subway platform this past April, which just makes Gothamist wonder why are people walking around with machetes. Are machetes being sold everywhere? We supposed if you really want to get your hands on one, you can, but sheesh, this is nuts. Or should we be carrying around machetes or those canes with the swords in them? Let's hope the police are okay with looking for machetes during their bag checks along with homemade bombs in faux-Tupperware.
