Multiple law enforcement sources reported on Saturday night that the “A-train Ripper” is in custody.
In a gruesome subway rampage that left two homeless people dead and two others slashed along the A train line, the knife-wielding madman was wanted, the sources said, and was nabbed in Upper Manhattan.
When he was taken into custody, his shoes were still splattered with the blood of his victims and he was still in possession of the bloody knife, one source added.
At the 34th Precinct in Washington Heights, the previously identified suspect was in custody, the sources said.
The bloodshed prompted an outcry for safer subways, and NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea responded by announcing a “surge” of 500 new cops to be deployed immediately throughout the city by the department’s Transit Bureau.
Friday morning, not far from where the suspected stabber had been captured, the spree started, authorities said.
A 67-year-old man was stabbed at 11:30 a.m. as he pushed his walker along the southbound platform at Washington Heights’ 181st Street station on the A train.
“I’m gonna kill you!” told the cops that his assailant was crying, according to reports. He was stabbed in the right knee and left buttocks, and is expected to survive the assault while he needed surgery.
At 11:29 p.m., twelve hours later, A man was found stabbed to death on Friday, but was still slumping in his seat on the A train at Far Rockaway’s Mott Avenue station.
He sustained neck and torso stab wounds, and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Around two hours later, at 1:15 a.m., A 44-year-old woman was found sprawled dead on Saturday, again in a pool of blood, under her subway seat inside the A train at Inwood’s 207th Street station.
Later, at 1:28 a.m., A 43-year-old man was unexpectedly stabbed on Saturday while sleeping on a staircase at West 181st Street train station A. He stumbled on West 181st Street at a nearby bank, but collapsed before entering the vestibule, the cops said.
The victim is being treated for four puncture wounds to his back at a local hospital, and is in stable condition.
The 44-year-old woman was taken to New York Presbyterian-Allen Hospital, where, according to the authorities, she was pronounced dead.
Since June 2006, when a homeless serial slasher wounded four people on a 13-hour rampage on trains in Harlem and Rockefeller Center, this is the worst subway stabbing spree since. Many of his victims survived.
