NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City police were questioning a person of interest in the spate of subway stabbing attacks that left two people dead, authorities said on Sunday.
“A person of interest is being questioned at this time in connection with the subway stabbings,” NYPD Detective Martin Brown said.
Brown declined to say when the person was taken into custody, or whether the person was a suspect in one or more of the four unprovoked attacks that apparently targeted homeless people and took place on the A train or at stations served by it beginning Friday morning.
Local radio station 1010WINS, citing police sources, said the suspect is a man who was taken into custody late on Saturday wearing blood-soaked clothes and shoes.
In the first attack, a 67-year-old man is recovering in the hospital after being stabbed by a masked assailant at the West 181st Street station in upper Manhattan, police said.
Hours later, a man was found stabbed to death on an A train at Far Rockaway-Mott Avenue station in Queens.
Soon afterward, a 44-year-old woman was discovered unconscious with stab wounds on an A train at the 207th Street station in Manhattan. She was pronounced dead at a hospital.
The fourth person was a 43-year-old man who was stabbed early on Saturday, also at the West 181st Street station. After undergoing surgery, he was in a stable condition, police said.
New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea told reporters on Saturday that 500 additional officers were being deployed to the city’s transit system “to make sure people feel safe.”
(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
