Police investigating the stabbing death of a Fordham teenager by a group of other youths were focusing on revenge as the motive, police sources said.

The attackers have been identified and arrests are expected shortly, said one police source.

Seventeen-year-old Pompey Pernell became the 52nd Precinct’s first homicide victim of the year after he was attacked by three young males around 7 p.m. Wednesday near East 193rd Street and Decatur Avenue, a known gang and narcotics sales area in the precinct.

Detectives believe the stabbing involved revenge against the victim, who was arrested in December for slashing another member of the crew, said another police source.

“This is a crew – not a gang – that sells drugs near the location where Pernell was stabbed,” said the police source.

Police said the three attackers surrounded Pernell and one of them stabbed him multiple times in the chest. He staggered down the block into a bodega where he collapsed. EMS rushed Pernell, of 2554 Marion Ave., to St. Barnabas Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead.

Pernell was killed two blocks from where another teen was killed two blocks away. That killing was gang-related, police said at the time.

It was also less than a mile away from where knife and machete-wielding Trinitarios gang members dragged Lesandro (Junior) Guzman-Feliz from a bodega last summer and stabbed and slashed him to death.