The NYPD has arrested a man suspected of fatally stabbing two homeless people on the A-line and seriously injuring two others during an onslaught of unprovoked violence that began Friday morning and continued until early Saturday morning. .
Rigoberto Lopez, 21, was arrested Saturday night and charged with two counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder. Lopez’s address, provided by the NYPD, is a shelter for the homeless at the Red Lion Inn in Butler Street in Boerum Hill.
Lopez’s victims were apparently homeless. The bodies of the two murder victims were found across the A-line – the first at Mott Avenue-Beach 22nd Street Station in Far Rockaway, Queens, where a man was fatally stabbed on a subway bank at about 11:20 p.m. . Friday at noon. About two hours later, a 44-year-old woman was found dead with stab wounds in a train at the Inwood-207th Street terminal.
The first known stab victim in Lopez’s alleged uproar was attacked Friday morning when a 67-year-old man was stabbed inside Fort Washington-181 Street subway station. The victim survived the attack and was treated at a local hospital. The fourth victim reported was stabbed in the back at the same station around 01:15 on Saturday. That 43-year-old man was admitted to the hospital in a stable condition.
With a suspected serial killer in general, the NYPD flooded the subway system with 500 additional officers, assigning at least one officer to each of NYC’s 472 subway stations on Saturday and Sunday. At a press conference Saturday, NYPD commissioner Dermot Shea told reporters “there is a small army of detectives and investigators working all night through New York City.”
An NYPD spokesman said Sunday that Lopez had been arrested in the 34th District, which includes Inwood and the subway station where the last stabbing took place. No further details were immediately available about the arrest, but police told the NY Post the suspect had blood stains on his sneakers.
The NYPD tweeted a photo of a knife allegedly in Lopez’s possession:
Police sources told the Daily News that Lopez was mentally ill and that he had been arrested four times, including an arrest in January.