2 people killed in subway knifings

NEW YORK — A knife-wielding assailant killed two people and wounded two more in a 14-hour crime rampage, attacking his victims along the A train line in Manhattan and Queens, N.Y., police said Saturday.

New York police detectives believe the four violent attacks were all linked as the hunt for the attacker continued, according to sources.

The first and last incidents both occurred at the 181st Street station in Washington Heights neighborhood in Manhattan. The two fatal attacks in between took place in Queens and Manhattan.

The two people killed were not identified Saturday as police tracked down family members for notification. Police said the assailant was possibly a homeless person preying on homeless victims.

The first fatality, a 40-yearold man, was found dead inside a train idling at the Mott Avenue station in the Far Rockaway neighborhood in Queens at 11:19 p.m. Friday. He had been stabbed numerous times in the neck and chest, and police arrived after a witness reported the killing to the booth clerk, police said.

The second fatality, a 44-year-old woman, was found about two hours later beneath the seats of another train at the West 207th Street station in the Inwood neighborhood in Manhattan. She was stabbed several times and died about an hour later Saturday at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, police said.

The first reported stabbing victim was at 11:30 a.m. Friday, with the suspect attacking a 67-year-old man sitting on his walker on the subway platform at the 181st Street station in Washington Heights, police said.

The final known attack came when the suspect stabbed a homeless man sleeping on the stairs at the same station around 1:30 a.m. Police said the victim was stabbed four times in the back, just below his neck, but was expected to survive.

“The recent horrifying attacks in the subway system are outrageous and unacceptable,” New York City Transit Interim President Sarah Feinberg and Transit Workers Union Local 100 President Tony Utanosaid said in a joint statement Saturday. “Every customer, and each of our brave, heroic transit workers, deserve a safe and secure transit system.”

The statement called for an immediate increase of police to the city’s mass transit system after the deadly attacks, the latest of several violent incidents in the city’s subway system in recent weeks.

On Thursday night, construction worker Gino Delacruz-Rodriguez was stabbed as he and his girlfriend, Julia Calel, waited for a train at Christopher Street station in the West Village neighborhood in Manhattan.

“It just happened out of nowhere,” Calel told The New York Daily News on Friday. “The guy did nothing, said nothing,” before he stabbed the victim, she said.

On Tuesday, an unidentified woman shoved Rosa Elizabeth Galeas-Forencio onto the tracks at the E. 174th Street station in the Bronx. A fellow rider on the platform helped the 54-year-old housekeeper to safety as a train was nearing the station.

On Feb. 2, Rafael Wilson was thrown onto the tracks by a man inside the Fulton Street station in downtown Manhattan.

And on Jan. 16, a 43-yearold man was pushed onto the tracks in Harlem.

New York Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said in an interview Wednesday that the agency intends to “do everything in our power to make sure it remains an extremely safe transit system.”

“We’ll make sure we have the proper balance of officers deployed appropriately … to the right spots to keep New Yorkers safe,” he said.