A subway dagger that killed two homeless people and hit two others during a violent 2-hour spree has been charged with murder after being arrested while covered in blood.
Rigoberto Lopez, 21, was taken into police custody Saturday night at W. 186th St and Audubon Avenue in Washington Heights, according to the New York Daily News.
Police sources said Lopez, who suffers from mental illness, was charged with murder and attempted murder on Sunday after confessing to all the attacks.
Lopez was reportedly arrested in Upper Manhattan, a few blocks from where the bloody rampage began and taken into custody in the 34th District of Washington Heights.
The fatal stab wounds took place at opposite ends of the A subway line, which runs from the Inwood section of Upper Manhattan to Rockaway, Queens.
NYPD commissioner Dermot Shea announced on Saturday that a “wave” of an additional 500 police officers for the department’s transportation office would be immediately deployed to the city.
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Rigoberto Lopez (pictured), 21, suffering from mental illness, was charged on Sunday with murder and attempted murder after confessing to all the attacks.
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Lopez is accused of killing two homeless and shooting two others during a violent 14 hour spree has been charged with murder after being arrested while covered in blood. Police patrol a Brooklyn subway station
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At a press conference on Saturday, police told reporters the violent stabbing spree began around 11:20 a.m. Friday.
It was around this time that a 67-year-old man was stabbed by an assailant at the 181st Street A line underground station.
The victim is expected to survive, police say.
He told cops his attacker shouted “I’m going to kill you,” before being stabbed in the right knee and left buttock, The New York Post reported.
The next attack came before midnight, when authorities found a man stabbed to death in his seat on the A train at Mott Avenue station in Far Rockaway, Queens.
The victim died from stab wounds to the neck and chest. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Just two hours later, a 44-year-old woman was found unconscious after being stabbed while driving the A train to 207th Street Station in Upper Manhattan.
The woman was rushed to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Minutes later, a 43-year-old man was randomly stabbed at the A subway station on West 181st Street in Manhattan.
The man was rushed to hospital where he is listed in stable condition.
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Police patrol the Line A subway bound for Inwood on Saturday, after the NYPD deploys an additional 500 officers to the subway system
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Police are seen on the subway line A to Inwood on Saturday looking for the subway slasher
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A man was found stabbed to death Friday before midnight at the Mott Avenue Beach subway station in the Far Rockaway section of Queens – the southern end of the A subway line. The station was closed while police investigate
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The frenzy of cuts sparked a massive manhunt and outcry for safer subways.
Officers were seen patrolling the city’s metro stations looking for Lopez ahead of his arrest.
The NYPD plans to deploy 865 additional officers to patrol the subway on Monday.
Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been an increase in violent incidents inside largely desolate metro stations as ridership plummeted due to fear of being infected.
Transit workers have demanded that the 24-hour subway program be resumed after several people reported being assaulted overnight when trains are stopped for COVID-19 clean-up.
The union representing Metropolitan Transportation Authority workers who operate the city’s public buses and subways is assaulted, harassed, spat and, in severe cases, nearly killed by assailants at largely empty stations.
In November, the New York Police Department said it would add about 200 cops to its patrols at subway stations after a series of disturbing incidents.
Noel Quintana, 61, was on a Manhattan subway taking him to work in Harlem last Wednesday when an unknown attacker kicked his bag, then whipped a box cutter and gave him a cut in the face from ear to ear.
Last Thursday morning, another woman was pushed past a train at Union Station in Lower Manhattan.
The woman, in her 40s, miraculously survived by rolling between the tracks as the train passed overhead.
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NYPD officers patrol the Jay Street Metro Tech station in Brooklyn on Saturday, looking for the suspected subway slasher
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Police Commissioner Dermot Shea addresses the media on recent subway crimes at NYPD headquarters in New York on Saturday
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A suspect, Aditya Vemulapati, was detained at the scene by transit workers and is charged with attempted murder, criminal assault and reckless endangerment. His last known address is in Michigan and he is believed to be homeless.
According to the NYPD, there have been 16 metro push incidents in 2019. So far this year, there have been as many.
On Christmas Eve, Narinder Kumar, 70, an MTA station agent, was pushed onto the subway tracks at the Nassau Avenue G subway stop in Brooklyn around 3 a.m.
Kumar was fortunate enough to be alive even though he suffered a broken spine and head injuries. Fortunately, he missed the third electrified rail.
The alleged assailant, Jhonathan Martinez, 27, was trying to board one of the trains, which are only available to first responders and transit workers overnight.
Martinez has been charged with assault, harassment and reckless endangerment.
On August 5, Reggie Frazier, a father of three who lost his 21-year-old daughter last year to COVID-19, swept the Dyckman Street subway station in the Inwood section of Upper Manhattan around 2:15 a.m. – more than an hour after the last trains stop for the day.
“Yo, man, no train after 1am,” Frazier, 61, told a man who walked around the station, according to THE CITY.
According to Frazier, the man replied, “Shut up, I’ll punch you in the face. “
“I said, ‘I don’t wanna fight you man, I’m at work,’ Frazier told The City. “But he grabbed a crate and started to swing.
The man attacked Frazier with a crate of milk. As Frazier tried to escape, he tore a tendon in his right knee. Since that day, he has not returned to work.
“I was not sworn into this job to take hits,” he said.
The man identified as Frazier’s attacker, Ramon Garrido, 36, has been arrested and charged.
Alexander Jaiserie, a 23-year-old MTA train operator, told THE CITY that he and a conductor were assaulted in the early morning of July 10 after their empty No.7 train arrived at Flushing-Main Street station in Queens.
“As we left Willets Point we heard of a disturbed person causing trouble at Flushing Main and a request for the police to come to the station,” he said.
“So we knew there was someone causing problems and to be aware of it.
According to Jaiserie, a man on the platform prevented him and driving from leaving the first car of the train.
As they tried to walk between the subway cars, the man jumped up. He then threw himself at the two transit workers again as they emerged onto the platform.
The man fled and no one was charged.
Metro crime has fallen by more than 50% so far in 2021 compared to the same time last year – but ridership has fallen by around 70% during the pandemic, suggesting that the crime rate per passenger may have increased.
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