A 24-year old suspect is in custody after series of attacks in New York’s Chinatown neighborhood, police say

This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

A homeless man wielding a long metal pipe rampaged through New York City early Saturday attacking other homeless people who were sleeping, killing four and leaving a fifth in critical condition, police said.

The chief of Manhattan south detectives, Michael Baldassano, said at a Saturday news conference that the men were attacked at random in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood with the object that authorities recovered.

Police responded to a 911 call just before 2am as one assault was in progress.

A 24-year-old suspect was in custody but has yet to be charged, the detective said. Police recovered a metal pipe that was still in the suspect’s hands when he was arrested after fleeing following the attacks.

The chief said he also is homeless.

“The motive appears to be right now, just random attacks; it doesn’t seem any of them (the victims) was targeted by race, age anything of that nature,” Baldassano said.

Two witnesses told responding officers that the suspect was wearing a black jacket and black pants, which helped police find him quickly just a few streets away.

Two of the men were killed on the Bowery, which cuts through the heart of Chinatown and has for decades been known as New York’s skid row, inhabited by homeless people who misuse drugs and alcohol.

During the day, the increasingly gentrified neighborhood is bustling with small businesses and street vendors offering discount goods, its sidewalks packed with pedestrians.

Late at night, when the shops close, it turns into a quiet, desolate neighborhood that was the setting for Saturday’s attacks.

The victims were attacked in three different locations near the intersection of the Bowery and East Broadway. One died of blunt trauma to the head. A second man was attacked nearby but survived. He was hospitalized in critical condition. Police planned to question him as soon as possible.

The other three victims, attacked about a block away, also died of head trauma.

The identities of the victims have not been released.

Baldassano said police were searching the neighborhood for any other possible victims.

Another homeless man who had slept in the area, Stephen Miller, said he knew one of the victims as kind and quiet.

“No one knew him by name, but we saw him every day,” Miller said. “At this point, I’m just sad. This guy never did anything. Just had a life to live. It sucks that he’s out here in the rain and everything but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a life to live.”

Uptick in homelessness in New York

New York City’s homeless population has grown in recent years, to a great extent because of the lack of affordable housing.

Homeless people remain among the city’s most vulnerable residents. Over the last five years, an average of seven have been slain each year.

The city, which has a population of more than 8 million and is the largest in the US, has a variety of shelters and services, including around the Bowery area of Manhattan, close to Chinatown.

More than 133,200 different men, women and children slept in the city’s shelter system, according to the Coalition for the Homeless, in the 2018 fiscal year.

“It should serve as a reminder to all of us that our homeless neighbors live without the protection and privacy of a home,” the organization said in a statement about the murders. “They are our fellow human beings and deserve the dignity and safety that a home assures.”

The organization also found that more than 63,000 people slept in a shelter each night in February 2019, up 150% from 2009.

The Bowery Mission, an advocacy group, said nearly 4,000 sleep each night on the streets, other public spaces or in the the subway, which runs 24 hours a day.

This week, the city’s public transit body, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), said the number of homeless people living in the subways jumped 20% from last year to 2,178 people.

Following an uptick in homelessness under the mayor, Bill de Blasio, advocates for the homeless have ramped up calls for more affordable housing in the city. The last significant reduction in homelessness in New York took place just before the economic recession.