DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Penn Station slashing suspect was free despite eerily similar 2022 attack.

The homeless madman who allegedly slashed five people with a double-edged knife in Penn Station carried out an eerily similar attack in New Jersey just four years ago, The Post has learned.

But despite the victim being grievously injured in that 2022 Newark stabbing, Hector Deleon, 51, was given just two years of probation as a sentence, court records show.

The victim in that heinous attack, a man who wasn’t publicly identified, landed in the trauma ward, where he received nine stitches to close the knife wound on the left side of his neck, a criminal complaint from February 2022 shows.

Still, Deleon doesn’t appear to have spent any significant time behind bars before Sunday evening — when he allegedly went on a random rampage in the busy Midtown commuter hub, according to law-enforcement sources and witnesses.

The mentally ill don’t belong on the streets.