NEW YORK — A Ukrainian-born graffiti artist who went on a 28-hour stabbing rampage that took the lives of his stepfather, his ex-girlfriend and her mother was arrested Saturday at a subway stop in Times Square after slashing a man on a train, police said.
Maksim Gelman, 23, is also accused of running down a 62-year-old man while driving a stolen Lexus, one of two cars he hijacked a day earlier, Commissioner Raymond Kelly told a news conference. The pedestrian died later at a hospital.
Gelman was taken into police custody at about 9 a.m. Saturday after a nightlong manhunt across New York City.
“It’s so horrendous and bizarre. We have no reason to know why he did this,” said Kelly, who held up a photo of the kitchen knife that he said Gelman had used to slash the rider on the head and neck.
The bloody rampage started just after 5 a.m. Friday, when police say Gelman fatally knifed his stepfather, Aleksandr Kuznetsov, at their apartment in Brooklyn’s Sheapshead Bay neighborhood. Gelman had gotten into a fight with his mother after she refused to allow him to use her Lexus, and Kuznetsov intervened and was attacked, Kelly said.
Police found the 54-year-old man’s body at his home in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay, a predominantly Eastern European immigrant neighborhood.
Gelman then stole the Lexus and drove off, hitting a 62-year-old pedestrian, police said.
At about 10:30 a.m., Gelman entered the home of his ex-girlfriend and used a kitchen knife to fatally stab her mother, 56-year-old Anna Bulchenko, Kelly said. When her daughter, 20-year-old Yelena Bulchenko, arrived home at about 4 p.m., she found her mother dead in a pool of blood and called 911, police said.
Gelman apparently was still in the house, chasing Yelena Bulchenko out and stabbing her to death, Kelly said.
He then fled in the Lexus, rear-ending a Pontiac whose driver confronted Gelman and was stabbed three times in the chest but survived, Kelly said.
The commissioner said Gelman confronted a couple in a Nissan just before 1 a.m. Saturday, stabbing the man multiple times and taking the car.
At 8 a.m. Saturday, passengers on a southbound No. 1 train in upper Manhattan noticed that photos of Gelman that appeared in newspapers matched a man on the train. Some exited the train at the West 96th Street station and called police, Kelly said.
Gelman got off the train at the West 34th Street station, crossing the tracks and using a catwalk to reach a northbound No. 3 train, where he stabbed the passenger, the commissioner said.
He was taken into custody from the train at Times Square.
Kelly described Gelman as “a drug user” with 10 previous arrests — mostly linked to graffiti and drugs.
The commissioner said the suspect’s statements to police were “pretty incoherent” — including one in which he stated that “she had to die.” Kelly said he wasn’t sure if that was a reference to the ex-girlfriend or someone else.
