NEW YORK — A man has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the fatal stabbings of three people in a string of random attacks across Manhattan, police said Tuesday.
Ramon Rivera, 51, was taken into custody after he was found with blood on his clothes and the two kitchen knives, authorities said.
''Three New Yorkers. Unprovoked attacks that left us searching for answers on how something like this could happen,'' Mayor Eric Adams said at a news conference Monday afternoon.
Investigators were working to understand what propelled the rampage, which happened within 2 1/2 hours Monday.
''No words exchanged. No property taken. Just attacked, viciously,'' said Joseph Kenny, the New York Police Department's chief of detectives. ''He just walked up to them and began to attack them with the knives.''
The first stabbing, on West 19th Street, killed a 36-year-old construction worker, Angel Lata Landi, who was standing by his work site near the Hudson River a little before 8:30 a.m., police said. About two hours later and across the island of Manhattan, a 68-year-old man was attacked while fishing in the East River near East 30th Street.
Both men died shortly after the stabbings, Kenny said. The fisherman's name was not immediately released.
The suspect then apparently traveled north near the riverfront. Around 10:55 a.m., a 36-year-old woman identified as Wilma Augustin was stabbed multiple times near the United Nations headquarters on East 42nd Street, Kenny said. She died later Monday at a hospital, police said.
