A scissor-wielding psycho who stabbed five people in Riverside Park — including a toddler and his ballet-dancer dad — was sentenced to 23 years behind bars on Tuesday.
“This is one of the most frightening types of cases I have ever seen.This was a completely random attack. These are the crimes that people fear the most. The lives of the people will be changed life long. This is not something you forget,” Judge Charles Solomon told the 44-year-old Julius James Graham in Manhattan Criminal Court, where several victims read statements about the grisly October 2013 rampage.
James Fayette — once a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet — was in the park with his 18-month-old son when he heard screams from a female jogger who had been stabbed in the neck.
“Completely unprovoked, Julius chased me down from behind as I yelled no. He slashed my son’s arm twice. He plunged his blade into my chest two times,” Fayette said in a statement read by Assistant DA Shanda Strain.
He said if it were not for a good Samaritan who came by, “ripping Julius off of me, I would have been killed and he would have had a clear path to my son.”
The madman had first stabbed jogger Deanna Koestel in the back and then turned the broken scissors on Ben Leohnen, who was walking his dog, cops said.
“I was left on the ground with blood gushing out of my back and my arm,” Koestel said in court.
“I would undergo a five-hour surgery. I would lose my spleen and a good part of my pancreas,” Leohnen added.
Graham — who had been charged with attempted murder but pled guilty last month to four counts of first-degree assault — showed no emotion and said nothing as the harrowing accounts of carnage were read.
His lawyer, Heather Smith, said “he asked that I express his sincere remorse.”