Two people died and two others were injured in a “horrible” series of stabbings on a New York subway line, the Brooklyn district president said on Saturday.
The stabbings took place between Friday morning and Saturday morning on train A, police said. Authorities are investigating whether a person is responsible for all four stabbings.
Police were called to a Fort Washington police station around 11:20 am on Friday and found a 67-year-old man suffering from knife wounds, officials said at a news conference on Saturday afternoon.
Public transport chief Kathleen O’Reilly said the victim was stabbed by an unidentified man and was taken to hospital for treatment.
On Friday night, just before 11:30 pm, the police received another call at Far Rockaway station and found a man on the train with knife wounds to his neck and body. He was pronounced dead at the scene, according to O’Reilly.
About two hours later, a Metropolitan Transport Authority official found a 44-year-old woman unconscious on a train suffering from several knife wounds, according to authorities. She died in a hospital.
At the same time, a 43-year-old man was found at the Fort Washington subway station with knife wounds. The man told police he was attacked by an unknown man, said Brian McGee, chief of detectives in northern Manhattan.
The victim was taken to the hospital, where he was in a stable state.
“Three of these incidents appear to be connected, and the detective office is looking into the possibility that all four may have been committed by an individual,” O’Reilly told reporters.
Police commissioner Dermot Shea expressed his sympathy for the victims and said that an additional 500 police officers will be immediately dispatched across the city to patrol the subway stations.
Eric Adams, Brooklyn district president, said the stabbings had taken place amid a wave of other violent crimes on the city’s subways.
“The perpetrators of this violence often struggle with some form of severe mental illness and their targets are often some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers, including our homeless neighbors who seek the subway system as a refuge during the winter months,” he said in a statement.
“It is clear that the city’s current approach to metro security is failing,” he added.
