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When you see a homeless person, think "wide berth."
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4 New York City Stabbings Within 12 Hours; Homeless Man Arrested
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
NEW YORK — A 21-year-old homeless man was arrested Wednesday in connection with a string of bloody attacks over 12 hours in Manhattan that left four people recovering from stab wounds, including two Canadian tourists and a Texas man.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Wednesday that police found the likely weapon, a knife, with the suspect — who has not been formally charged.
The brazen assaults took place in public. Two of the victims were stabbed near a swank midtown hotel, while another was ambushed inside a subway car and a fourth on a platform waiting for the train.
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All the victims were hospitalized, but police said they were expected to survive.
The latest attack occurred as two Canadian women, ages 22 and 25, were walking near the W Hotel about 4 a.m., according to authorities. The man approached the women, and after a short conversation with them, police said he stabbed each one in the back before fleeing.
Two security officers from the W Hotel tended to the women and called 911. Two of its doormen followed the man to a McDonald's and waited for police, who nabbed him as he was coming out of the restaurant, according to police and hotel spokesman Jane Lehman.
Police said they were questioning the man but did not have a motive yet.
An hour before the attack on the women, a 30-year-old man waiting with a friend on a midtown subway platform in Rockefeller Center was stabbed twice in the stomach. Police said the attacker was after a cell phone.
At about 4 p.m. Tuesday, Christopher McCarthy, 21, of Houston, was knifed by a man sitting across from him in a subway car on Manhattan's Upper West Side, an attack police said was random and apparently unprovoked.
McCarthy and his girlfriend had gotten lost after heading in the wrong direction on the subway, and switched trains to travel back downtown when the young man was assaulted.
With millions of people riding the subway every day, the incident drew troubling comparisons to the 1990 death of 22-year-old Brian Watkins, the Utah tourist stabbed to death in a Manhattan subway station while defending his mother during a robbery.
But tourists said New York feels safe.
"There are a lot of police around. I don't think these stabbings are just random acts," Scott McCoig, 24, of Detroit, said Wednesday.
McCoig said he'll still use the subway. "It's the best way to travel," he said.
The slew of stabbings comes on the heels of recent news that violent crime in the city continues to decline despite a national spike.
The FBI said that while homicides rose 4.8 percent nationwide last year, they fell 5.4 percent between 2004 and 2005 in New York City.
Violent crime in New York dropped 1.9 percent, according to the FBI, in a year when such crimes rose 2.5 percent nationwide. That was the largest percentage increase since 1991.
Lewis Gale, of Salt Lake City, Utah, dean of the Goddard School of Business and Economics at Weber State University, was visiting New York City.
"It won't keep me away from New York," said Gale. "New York is a vibrant, fun place with lots of culture, but like any other city, it has its challenges." |
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