A man carried out a series of stabbings across a wide area of Manhattan on Monday morning, killing two people and seriously wounding a third without saying a word to his victims, officials said.
Authorities said the 51-year-old suspect was in police custody after he was found with blood on his clothes and the kitchen knives he was carrying. The names of the suspect and victims were not immediately revealed.
“Three New Yorkers. “The unprovoked attacks have us searching for answers about how something like this could happen,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a news conference, calling the violence a “clear and blatant example” of failures in the criminal justice system and elsewhere.
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The suspect, who appears to be homeless, was sentenced in a criminal case a few months ago, the Democratic mayor said, without providing further details.
Investigators were working to understand the cause of the rampage that occurred over a period of two and a half hours.
“No words were exchanged. No property was taken. She was viciously attacked,” said Joseph Kinney, chief of detectives for the New York Police Department.
The first stabbing, which occurred on West 19th Street, killed a 26-year-old construction worker who was standing next to his work site near the Hudson River shortly before 8:30 a.m.
About two hours later, across Manhattan Island, a 68-year-old man was attacked while fishing in the East River near East 30th Street.
Both men are dead, Kenny said.
The suspect appears to have traveled north near the riverbank. At about 10:55 a.m., a 36-year-old woman was stabbed multiple times near the United Nations headquarters on East 42nd Street, Kenney said. She is in the hospital in critical condition.
A taxi driver who was passing by witnessed the third attack and notified police at nearby First Avenue and East 46th Street, officials said. An officer quickly arrested the suspect.
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