The knife-wielding maniac who allegedly sliced two people in a pair of subway stabbings last week is a well-known recidivist with a violent past who’s been arrested dozens of times but continually ended up back on the streets, The Post learned.
Suspected slasher Jamar Banks racked up 54 arrests for a shooting, stabbings, fare-jumping and domestic violence as he exhibited a history of mental illness issues, sources said.
He was picked again up by the NYPD’s Warrant Squad Sunday and charged with assault and weapons possession in his latest violent attacks, police sources told The Post.
The suspect was psychologically evaluated at least once while in custody over the last four years, and cops flagged him four times as being a potentially suicidal, emotionally disturbed person, sources said.
A frequent subject of his misguided rage was his uncle, who lived in the Bronx — sources said Jamar Banks was arrested for two dozen domestic incidents between 2004 and 2021.
He was also put on the transit offender recidivist database five times since 2020, has been arrested dozens of times for fare evasion since 1992, the sources said. He’s also been picked up on a slew of arrests on drug charges, sources added.
Banks was fingered in January for a Manhattan robbery pattern that includes a variety of larcenies and thefts — including accusations that he stole $222 worth of soap from Walgreens on Nov. 14 and $580 of mouthwash on Oct. 30, sources added.
Earlier in 2024, Banks allegedly stole soap and body wash from a Queens Walgreens in April; more than $2,100 worth of beauty products from a Bronx Walgreens in June; and two bottles of Raid and a container of Vaseline from a Bronx Walgreens later that month.
He was also hit with resisting arrest charges for the last theft because he allegedly fought back when a cop tried to arrest him, according to a criminal complaint.
The officerzapped him with a stun gun, then locked him up, the complaint said.
Banks, 52, was arrested around midnight Sunday for allegedly stabbing a 31-year-old man on a No. 2 train at 14th Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan on Wednesday after arguing with his victim, cops said.
He is also suspected of starting another argument with an off-duty MTA cleaner at about 6 a.m. on Thursday, then knifing his victim in the back and armpit on the northbound No. 6 train platform at Pelham Bay station in The Bronx, police said.
The attacker fled after both stabbings. Both victims were taken to hospitals in stable condition.
Before his Sunday arrest at the 219th Street station in The Bronx, police were told in an internal memo to exercise “extreme caution” if they found the alleged stab-happy psycho, who was carrying a large knife when he was collared.
Banks’ history gave authorities with a cause for concern, according to sources.
In October 2022, Banks allegedly stabbed a 26-year-old man in the leg with a kitchen knife on a Manhattan subway after Banks tried to sit on his victim’s girlfriend’s lap.
He was arrested that December for the attack, and authorities charged him with assault with intent to cause injury with a weapon, according to sources.
In June 2015, Banks was accused of bursting out of a McDonald’s bathroom in downtown Manhattan and stabbing a man who’d knocked on the door to see if anyone was inside, sources said.
And some years before, in July 1997, Banks was charged with attempted murder for shooting a man in the leg after the victim bumped into him on East 226th Street in the Bronx.
Banks, then 24, was charged with intent to commit murder, assault with intent to cause serious injury with a weapon, criminal use of a firearm in the first degree, criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, cops said.
It was unclear Monday how any of these cases were resolved.
“He has a very very lengthy arrest history,” one police source told The Post. “It looks like he rides the rails back and forth.”