CRAZY RUSSIAN WAS ON A STABBING SPREE! HE KILLED ATLEAST 4 PEOPLE & CARJACKED OTHERS TO GET AROUND THE CITY!

The crazed man who killed four people during a daylong rampage was nabbed early Saturday in a Manhattan subway station - but not before he brutally attacked another innocent victim.

Maksim Gelman, 23, repeatedly stabbed a man on a No. 2 train on the upper West Side just after 9 a.m. but could not escape the army of cops who closed in minutes later.

Investigators believe Gelman hopped off the train when it stopped just shy of the Times Square station.

He then crossed the tracks to an uptown No. 3 train, on which he was grabbed by police.

Gelman stared icily ahead as he was put into a waiting NYPD car minutes later. It was unclear if he was injured.

The 40-year-old man he stabbed on the train at the 96th St. and Broadway station was rushed to Bellevue Hospital in critical condition, police said. He suffered several wounds to his head and chest.

One cop was also hurt, though the extent of the officer's injuries were not known.

A bloody knife was found on Gelman, police said.

Police requested an MTA bus to rush to Times Square to transport witnesses for questioning, officials said. Subway service was suspended on the No. 1, 2, 3 line from 34th to 96th Sts., officials said.

Gelman was on the run after he butchered his stepfather, ex-girlfriend and her mother before mowing down an innocent man on the street. He also stabbed at least four other people and carjacked three vehicles in a bloody 24-hour span that began before dawn Friday.

The day-long manhunt for Gelman began about 5:10 a.m., after he stabbed his stepfather to death inside their apartment on E. 27th St. in Sheepshead Bay, police said.

Aleksandr Kuznetsov, 54, bled to death from several knife wounds. Neighbors said the murder may have stemmed from an argument over Gelman using the stepfather's Lexus.

Gelman sped away from the murder scene in a gray 2004 Lexus ES 330 and disappeared for several hours.

Police believe Gelman struck a city crossing guard before he barreled through the intersection of Ocean Avenue and Avenue S at about 8:12 a.m. Friday. The 41-year-old guard suffered a broken leg.

Gelman emerged about 4:30 p.m. and viciously slashed to death his ex-girlfriend, Yelena Bulchenko, 20, and her mother, Anna, 56, at their home just blocks away from the first killing, sources said.

Gelman plunged a knife over a dozen times into Anna Bulchenko's body inside the apartment while her daughter tried to escape, sources said. But the killer caught up with his ex-flame just outside the building and stabbed her more than a dozen times, the sources said.

When cops arrived at the E. 24th St. residence, the two women were dead, police said. Moments after killing the women, Gelman attacked a passing motorist - stabbing 60-year-old Art DiCrescento before stealing his 1995 Pontiac Bonneville, cops said.

A witness saw the injured man just moments later. "He walked up the whole block in the middle of the road so slowly," said the witness, who didn't want to give his name.

"Then he leaned against a car and kept screaming, 'I'm bleeding to death! Somebody help me!' "

DiCrescento was taken to Lutheran Medical Center in critical condition.

"He's doing okay," DiCrescento's wife said outside their Brooklyn home early Saturday.

About a mile from the carjacking, police said a desperate Gelman plowed into a 60-year-old Steve Tannenbaum at Avenue R and Ocean Ave. Tannenbaum was taken to Kings County Hospital, where he died Friday night.

"A member of my family, whom I loved, is gone," said a devastated relative at the hospital.

Gelman - who is 6-feet tall and weighs about 170 pounds - was still on the lam hours later. A man matching his description was spotted near Ave. R and E. 18th St.

Edan Hanuka, who lives nearby, said a friend saw the man hiding behind a building.

"\[My friend\] went to have a cigarette on his balcony," said Hanuka, 19. "He saw a man with a hat, looking down and pressed up against the wall, as if hiding from the helicopter." Hanuka said the friend dialed 911.

After scores of cops searched the building, with helicopters thundering overhead, Gelman - who has one prior arrest for patronizing a prostitute and criminal possession of a controlled substance - couldn't be found.

The search at the building was called off about 8:30 p.m.

Forty-five minutes later, the stolen Pontiac was found abandoned at E. 15th St. in Flatbush. Sources said cops in nearby subway stations were on high alert as they believed the suspect to be on foot.

Another team of officers was combing an area near train tracks at Ocean Ave. and Avenue H in Midwood last night before racing off to East New York about 1 a.m., when Gelman struck again.

He hailed a livery cab driven by Fitz Fullertan, 55, at Rochester Ave. and St. John's Place in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, police sources said.

Telling Fullertan to drive, he then reached from the backseat and placed a machete up to Fullerton's throat, the sources said.

The driver fought back and as the men struggled, the car slammed into a a parked vehicle.

Gelman then hopped out of the car and attacked another man in front of a church on Eastern Parkway near Rockaway Ave. and rode off with the man's car, police sources and witnesses said.

"He was waiting for his wife to leave . . . The guy came by and tried to steal his car," said Ron, a witness who would only give his first name. "He was kicking him, literally kicking him to get him out of the car...He was stabbing at him with a long knife."

"It was a long knife," Ron said. "He was stabbing at him, but God has covered him."

Gelman sped off in the black 2001 Nissan Maxima with its driver - Shelden Pottinger, 25 - half-hanging out of the car.

"He was stabbing at me with a knife," Pottinger said. "I got dragged."

He broke free after a block and fell on the pavement.

Neighbors said police had been to the scene of the first homicide several times in the past. "I heard they didn't get along," a neighbor said of Kuznetsov and Gelman. "I know he got in a lot of fights."

Kuznetsov was described as a hulking man who worked hard. He drove an ambulette, leaving the condo early and returning home late.

"It's horrible that this happened," said Anthony Riggio, 34, the superintendent at the Waterview Village condos. "Lives were just ruined."

Yelena Bulchenko worked at Bright Smile Dental in Brooklyn, according to her Facebook page, where she quoted singer Bob Marley: "Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for."



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