New York – A homeless man was arrested Wednesday in the stabbing of four people, including three tourists, in a 12-hour span in Manhattan. Police said they were questioning the 21-year-old but did not know the assailant’s motive.
Two of the four victims were stabbed near a Times Square hotel; the others were attacked inside the subway system. Three were hospitalized, and police said they were expected to survive. The fourth was treated and released.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said investigators recovered the knife used in at least two of the attacks when they arrested the suspect.
Charges were pending against Kenny Alexis, who had been living in a shelter. Kelly said Alexis admitted stabbing two Canadians and a young man from Texas.
Despite the attacks, some tourists said New York still feels safe.
“There are a lot of police around. I don’t think these stabbings are just random acts,” said Scott McCoig, 24, of Detroit. McCoig said he will still use the subway. “It’s the best way to travel,” he said.
Police said two Canadian women were each stabbed in the back about 4 a.m. by a man who had engaged them in a short conversation near the W Hotel.
Two hotel security officers tended to the women and called 911, while two doormen followed the man to a nearby McDonald’s. Officers nabbed the suspect as he was leaving the restaurant, police said.
An hour earlier, a 30-year-old man was stabbed twice in the stomach a few blocks away as he and a friend waited on a subway platform in Rockefeller Center. Police said the attacker was after a cellphone.
On Tuesday afternoon, Christopher McCarthy of Houston was stabbed in the chest 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 was in critical but stable condition, doctors said.
Alexis also wielded the knife when a store employee confronted him about stealing two beers from a market Wednesday, the commissioner said.
