Three people died after being attacked by a man in different parts of Manhattan on Monday morning. The suspect, 51, was in police custody.
A man fatally stabbed three people in different parts of Manhattan on Monday morning in a series of random attacks he committed without saying a word to his victims, officials said.
The suspect, 51, was in police custody after being found with blood on his clothing and the two kitchen knives he was carrying, authorities said. The names of the suspect and victims were not released.
“Three New Yorkers. Unprovoked attacks that left us searching for answers as to how something like this could happen,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a news conference.
Investigators were working to understand what led to the attacks, which occurred over a period of 2 and a half hours.
“No words exchanged. No property stolen. Just attacks, in a vile manner,” said Joseph Kenny, chief of detectives for the New York Police Department.
“He just approached them and started attacking them with the knives.”
The first stabbing, on West 19th Street, killed a 36-year-old construction worker who was standing next to his workplace near the Hudson River shortly before 8:30 a.m. About two hours later and on the other side of the island from Manhattan, a 68-year-old man was attacked while fishing in the East River near East 30th Street.
Both men died shortly after the stabbings, Kenny said.
The suspect then apparently traveled north near the riverbank. Around 10:55 a.m., a 36-year-old woman was stabbed multiple times near the United Nations headquarters on East 42nd Street, Kenny said. The woman later died at a hospital, police said.
A passing taxi driver saw the third attack and alerted police at nearby First Avenue and East 46th Street, officials said. An officer soon apprehended the suspect.
The events occurred in a large city where, as in others, crime has figured prominently in political discourse and daily concerns in the years since pandemic lockdowns emptied the streets and caused disorder.
Murders in New York City so far in 2024 are down 14% from two years ago, but serious assaults are up about 12%, according to police statistics.
Some recent stabbings in public places have drawn attention, including a deadly attack at the Coney Island subway station a few weeks ago.
Adams, a Democrat, called Monday's violence “a clear, clear example” of failures in the criminal justice system and elsewhere.
The suspect in Monday's attacks, believed to be homeless, had been sentenced in a criminal case a few months ago and was arrested in a robbery case last month, officials said.
Three years ago, a series of stabbings at various points on a subway line left two people dead and two others injured within a few hours.
In 2019, four people sleeping on doorways and sidewalks in Chinatown were beaten to death, and a fifth was seriously injured, early Saturday morning.