“A ruthless killer is on the loose,” the Democratic mayors of New York and Washington said in a joint statement. Police in both cities are actively looking for an individual suspected of carrying out a series of gun attacks on homeless people. Our populations “are shocked by these horrific crimes committed by an individual who targets the most vulnerable of our residents”, added the city councilors of New York, Eric Adams, and Washington, Muriel Bowser, calling on the homeless to join shelters in awaiting his arrest.
CCTV footage showing a bearded man, dressed in black and with a shaved head, has been released by law enforcement, who are offering rewards of thousands of dollars for any information that could identify him. He is, according to them, responsible for five attacks perpetrated with the “same modus operandi” on men who were sleeping in the street.
A series of attacks between March 3 and 12
The first two took place in the middle of the night, on March 3 and 8, in the northeast of the American capital. The victims, who were shot, survived. On Wednesday 9, still in Washington, the emergency services intervened because the tent of a homeless person was on fire. Inside they found the body of a deceased man, who had been shot and stabbed several times.
According to investigators, the killer then went to New York, about 400 km north of the United States. On the night of Friday to Saturday, he committed two new attacks. A 38-year-old man was found injured but alive in the early morning in the south of the New York island of Manhattan.
At the end of the afternoon, in the same neighborhood, the police found another dead man, injured in the head and neck. According to CCTV footage, the suspect shot him around 6 a.m. as he slept, shortly after the first incident. These images, broadcast by local channels, show a man dressed in black, his head covered with a hood and his hands in blue gloves. He circles around a man wrapped up in a sleeping bag, kicks him lightly to check that he isn’t reacting, takes a look around, before shooting.