After at least five people were stabbed in Queens over the past nine days, a suspect of interest is being questioned and investigated by police.
The 27-year-old suspect, Jermaine Rigeur, was spotted by authorities on Wednesday morning in the Bedford Park station in the Bronx, and was taken into custody after a brief chase.
When detectives searched the suspect’s home in Jamaica, Queens, they found the hunting knife he allegedly used during the stabbings.
Police believe that Rigeur is likely associated with the five stabbings that have happened during the past week; one of which occurred just before Rigeur was arrested on Wednesday, another which took place just after midnight on Tuesday, and another which happened on Jan. 8. None of the victims were killed or have life-threatening injuries, though they were still left with serious wounds and are said to have been randomly attacked.
According to officials, the first stabbing occurred in the Springfield Gardens neighborhood around 6:30 P.M. on Jan. 8, to a 61-year-old man who said he felt “as if he had been punched in the back,” as stated by Joseph Kenny, the Police Department’s Chief of Detectives, at the news conference following the suspect’s arrest. The man was taken to Jamaica Hospital after he was attacked and treated for a puncture wound to his kidney.
The victim of the second assault was a 34-year-old woman who was returning home from work by bus just after midnight on Tuesday when she was struck by a man in the right side of her back at the edge of Springfield Gardens near the bus stop. She soon realized after the attack that she had been stabbed.
The last three assaults occurred on Wednesday morning, with the third and fourth happening right near each other in the span of five minutes, according to officials. At 7:30 a.m., a 74-year-old man was walking his wife to work when the same suspect ran up behind the couple and stabbed the man once in the back. The assailant then ran away and stabbed a 41-year-old man who had just left his home to move his car in the abdomen, then ran off.
About a half-hour later, the fifth and final attack took place in Jamaica following a verbal dispute between the suspect and a 36-year-old man on his way to work, who was then stabbed in the back, as stated by officials.
Chief Kenny also noted that the weapon used in all of the attacks was a hunting knife.
Rigeur, who has five arrests in the last 12 months with charges relating to assault and sex crimes, is charged with attempted murder and is also currently being investigated for unrelated stabbings that occurred on a Brooklyn Subway this past week.
