RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES

This is the type of story you can expect to see about a year later in one or another of the various crime dramas in the 'Law & Order' universe. It would also have been an engaging sub-plot on 'NYPD Blue'......

Wed Feb 2, 7:23 AM ET
BY NICOLE BODE and ROBERT F. MOORE,
With Jonathan Lemire
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

An impatient 75-year-old East Village man stabbed a homeless man in the throat yesterday after twisting apart a walking cane to reveal a long sword, cops and witnesses said.

Eugene Carlson allegedly attacked George Devol with the 22-inch blade after the homeless man blocked a narrow path along the snow-covered, trash-strewn sidewalk on E. Ninth St. and refused to budge. As several horrified churchgoers looked on, Carlson hacked into Devol's neck with his stealth weapon and nearly severed the victim's jugular vein outside Trinity Lower East Side Lutheran Church, police said.

"The old man was going to go after him again," said a witness, a homeless man who didn't want his name used. "I had to get involved."

The good Samaritan said he snatched the wooden cane and held Carlson until cops arrived about 1:40p.m.
"The old man was all confused," said the witness. "He was in a daze. He didn't know what he had done. You could tell."

Devol, 30, who had just left the church, between Avenues B and C, was in good spirits about getting a job at Con Edison before he was attacked, friends said. He was rushed to Bellevue Hospital and was in critical but stable condition last night.

Carlson, who lives up the block near Avenue C, was charged with first-degree assault and criminal possession of a weapon, authorities said.

His neighbors were stunned by the charges against him. "It's hard for me to wrap my mind around it," said Mal Stein, 44. "He's an elderly man, relatively fragile," Stein added. "He's not in good health."