A 17-year-old boy was punched and stabbed by a kitchen knife-wielding stranger who asked him what gang he belonged to in Queens, police said Tuesday.
The male attacker stormed up to the unsuspecting teen around 7:35 p.m. Monday as he walked on 34th Avenue near 82nd Street in Jackson Heights and asked him, “What set?,” referring to gangs, authorities said.
When the victim replied that he didn’t belong to one, the brute punched him and stabbed him on the upper right shoulder and lower right torso with a kitchen knife, cops said.
The injured teen went to the Elmhurst Hospital Center, where he was listed in stable condition.
The young victim did not know his attacker, who fled the scene and had not been caught by Tuesday morning, cops said.
The violence came less than a week after an innocent 9-year-old boy was shot and wounded in the crossfire of a suspected gang-related shooting in Brooklyn, according to cops and sources.
The boy took a stray bullet to the back of the leg on Bristol Street in Brownsville just before 6 p.m. Thursday, with investigators probing a potential gang link, cops and sources said.
No arrests have been made in that shooting.