Police investigate a series of murders and assaults on homeless people between Washington and New York. She announced on Tuesday that she had arrested a suspect, after posting photos of him.
A man suspected of killing two homeless people and injuring three others in Washington and New York was arrested on Tuesday morning, police in the American capital announced.
The suspect “is currently being questioned”, specify the police. The attacks, carried out since the beginning of March, targeted men sleeping rough.
A few hours earlier, new photos of the suspect had been released. In these shots from CCTV footage, we see a bearded man wearing a black hooded jacket. The authorities promised a reward in exchange for any information about the individual or the murders.
“Cold-Blooded” Killings
Denouncing murders committed in “cold blood” on a “vulnerable” population, the authorities had shown on Monday their determination to put the killer out of harm’s way as quickly as possible.
“A ruthless killer is on the loose, but we are going to arrest him and put him in jail,” assured the Democratic mayors of New York, Eric Adams, and Washington, Muriel Bowser, calling on the homeless to spend the night in shelters. accommodation centers.
The first two attacks took place on March 3 and 8 in the northeast of the American capital. The victims, who were shot, survived. On Wednesday March 9, still in Washington, the emergency services intervened because the tent of a homeless person was on fire. Inside they had found the body of a deceased man. The autopsy showed that he had succumbed to multiple gunshots and stab wounds.
According to investigators, the killer then traveled to New York, about 400 km to the north. Early Saturday morning, a 38-year-old man was found shot but alive in lower Manhattan.
Found through CCTV footage
At the end of the afternoon, the police had found another man in the same neighborhood, this time dead, with head and neck injuries. According to CCTV footage, the suspect shot him around 6am, shortly after the previous attack.
This video shows a man dressed in black, a hood over his head and wearing blue gloves. He walks around a man wrapped in a yellow sleeping bag, gives him little kicks to check that he is sleeping, takes a look around, before shooting.
It was by seeing this film that a Washington police investigator had made the link between the two series of attacks.
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