Patrons eating breakfast a McDonald's in Queens, New York were shocked when a man walked into the restaurant with a knife in his back.

Witnesses say that the man, who has been identified as 53-year-old Andrew Hardy, casually walked into the fast food chain in Jamaica drenched in blood with a kitchen knife sticking out of his back around 10:00 a.m.

"He was cool and calm. But you could tell he was shaken up," said Hardy's friend, Michel Green, 43, according to the New York Post. "I went to pull the knife out, but someone said, 'No, no! It might have hit an artery!' "

Another witness said they heard Hardy talking on his cell phone, saying his final goodbyes to a loved one.

"I'm pretty sure he was on the phone talking to somebody in his family or a loved one," witness Tromaine Yancey told CBS News. "He was talking to them and telling them it might be the last time he's speaking to them, he just wanted them to hear his voice."

Yancey said that customers tried to keep Hardy on his feet until authorities could arrive.

"Everybody was standing there to make sure he didn't fall backwards on the knife," she said.

Hardy was stabbed a few minutes earlier when he tried to break up a mob of men hurling glass bottles at each other on Sutphin Boulevard near 91st Street, just two blocks away from the Long Island Rail Road.

After emergency workers arrived on the scene, he were was rushed to Jamaica Hospital in serious but stable condition, said police.

"I don't know if he was in shock or what the situation was, but he was fine! It was like, 'Just another day in the hood,'" a worker from Sutphin Blvd told the New York Daily News. "It was crazy!"

"It's always rowdy over there because you have all the methadone people," the witness said.

Hardy was released from the hospital later in the day. He told The Post Tuesday night that he was attacked from behind.

"I'm blessed to be alive," Hardy said. "It was just a fight and it escalated into something bigger. They hit me from behind, so I couldn't see them -- but I have an idea who it was."