Passengers in NYC midtown train were trapped with armed killer

The Bronx-bound D train came to a screeching halt at around 2 a.m. in the tunnel between the Rockefeller Center and Seventh Avenue stations when a rider yanked the emergency cord after watching the carnage unfold.

The group of riders were stuck in the car behind locked doors as a pool of blood began to form around the dying man and the suspect, Gerardo Sanchez, 37, of The Bronx, coldly stood over him. Eventually, Sanchez strolled to one end of the car, and the rest of the passengers fled to the opposite end.

Sources identified the victim as Dwight Johnson, 36, who appeared to be homeless.

Sanchez, an exterminator, boarded the train at Rockefeller Center and asked the victim to remove his bag from an unoccupied seat — saying he had just gotten off work and was tired.

Johnson refused, and a cursing match quickly ensued.

The victim, who stood at least 6 inches taller than the 5-foot-6 Sanchez, punched his antagonist in the face, police sources said.

Sanchez — who was still wearing his work shirt emblazoned with his name, "Jerry," and the company logo, "Terminate Control" — bugged out, pulling a steak knife and plunging it into Johnson's jugular and hand, police said.

On hearing of the inexplicable murder over a seat in a nearly empty subway car, you would have expected the suspect to be a wild-eyed psycho right out of every straphanger's worst nightmare.

Instead, the handcuffed prisoner the police walked out of the Columbus Circle subway station Saturday morning was a balding, middle-age working man still in the uniform he wears as a pest exterminator.

His red shirt read "Jerry" over the right breast, "Terminate Control" over the left, as might a killer in a bad horror movie, but he was too mild-looking to seem capable of killing anything bigger than a cockroach.

Jerry Sanchez appeared as harmless as the teenaged gunman who was walked from a Bronx stationhouse earlier in the week after a 15-year-old girl was struck in the head by a stray bullet.

In that instance, we expected the suspect to be a hardened rockhead. Carvett Gentles proved to look even younger than his 16 years and too scrawny to inflict even a bloody nose without a pistol.

Neither suspect looked the part just as neither crime fit what the statistics say remains the safest big city in America.

Just be thankful that the suddenly crazed killer aboard the D train early Saturday morning did not have a gun. Any of the handful of people aboard could have been felled by a stray round.