A person stabbed three folks throughout a swath of Manhattan on Monday morning, killing two and critically wounding the third with out uttering a phrase to his victims, officers stated.
The 51-year-old suspect was in police custody after being discovered with blood on his garments and the 2 kitchen knives he was carrying, authorities stated. The suspect’s and victims’ names weren’t instantly launched.
“Three New Yorkers. Unprovoked assaults that left us trying to find solutions on how one thing like this might occur,” Mayor Eric Adams stated at a information convention.
Investigators have been working to grasp what propelled the rampage, which occurred inside 2 1/2 hours.
“No phrases exchanged. No property taken. Simply attacked, viciously,” stated Joseph Kenny, the New York Police Division’s chief of detectives. “He simply walked as much as them and commenced to assault them with the knives.”
The primary stabbing, on West nineteenth Avenue, killed a 36-year-old building employee who was standing by his work web site close to the Hudson River slightly earlier than 8:30 a.m.
About two hours later and throughout the island of Manhattan, a 68-year-old man was attacked whereas fishing within the East River close to East thirtieth Avenue.
Each males died, Kenny stated.
The suspect then apparently traveled north close to the riverfront. Round 10:55 a.m., a 36-year-old girl was stabbed a number of occasions close to the United Nations headquarters on East forty second Avenue, Kenny stated. She is hospitalized in essential situation.
A passing cabdriver noticed the third assault and alerted police on close by First Avenue and East forty sixth Avenue, officers stated. An officer quickly apprehended the suspect.
The bloodshed occurred in a significant metropolis the place, like in others, crime has taken a distinguished place in political discourse and on a regular basis issues within the years since pandemic lockdowns emptied streets and spurred dysfunction. Killings in New York Metropolis to this point in 2024 have declined 14% in two years, however critical assaults are up about 12%, in line with police statistics.
Some latest stabbings in public locations have drawn consideration, together with a deadly assault on the Coney Island subway station simply weeks in the past.
Adams, a Democrat, known as Monday’s violence “a transparent, clear instance” of failures within the legal justice system and elsewhere.
The suspect in Monday’s rampage, who apparently is homeless, had been sentenced in a legal case just a few months in the past and was arrested in a grand larceny case final month, officers stated.
The rampage got here three years after a string of stabbings at varied factors alongside a subway line killed two folks and wounded two others inside just a few hours.
In 2019, 4 individuals who have been sleeping in doorways and sidewalks in Chinatown have been crushed to demise, and a fifth was significantly injured, early one Saturday morning.