Five attacks, two deaths... New York and Washington plagued by a homeless killer

But who blames the homeless?

New York police have appealed for witnesses to find a man who fired twice Saturday morning at homeless people sleeping on the street, one of whom died.

A call for witnesses which resounded 400 km away, in Washington, while three homeless attacks were also recorded.

They would be the fruit of the same man.

According to initial investigations, the suspect first fired a gun at a 38-year-old man who was found injured but alive in the early morning hours in Lower Manhattan.

Then, shortly before 5 p.m. Saturday, in the same neighborhood, the police found another man dead in his sleeping bag, with head and neck injuries.

According to CCTV footage, the suspect shot him around 6 a.m. as he slept, shortly after the first incident.

🚨WANTED for SHOOTING: Today, between 4:36 am & 6:00 am, in the confines of the @NYPD1pct and @NYPD5pct, the suspect approached two homeless individuals on the street and shot both of them, killing one individual.

NYPD executives will provide an update live at 9:30 PM pic.twitter.com/JwoaWnKrzd

— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) March 13, 2022

We have Monday after that a priori the same man was also wanted in Washington, for similar facts.

u In the middle of the night, on March 3 and 8, in the northeast of the American capital, two homeless people were wounded by gunshots, but they survived.

Wednesday 9, always in Washington, the helps had intervened because the tent of a SDF was on fire.

Inside they found the body of a deceased man who had been shot and stabbed several times.

"A ruthless killer"

“These acts are clear and they are awful,” Democratic Mayor Eric Adams lamented on Saturday evening.

“Two people were shot because they were sleeping on the street.

They were not committing a crime, they were sleeping on the street,” he said.

Eric Adams and police have called on New York's tens of thousands of homeless people to avoid sleeping rough and join emergency shelters in the city of nearly 9 million people.

"A ruthless killer is on the loose, but we're going to arrest him and put him in jail," the two metropolis' Democratic mayors said.

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, in a joint press release.

Law enforcement is offering rewards of thousands of dollars for any information that could identify him.

New York has a large number of homeless people sleeping on the streets and the Democratic mayor, who took office on January 1, announced a plan in mid-February to dislodge those who settle in the gigantic underground subway system, in particular winter when temperatures frequently drop below 0 degrees Celsius.

This project had been poorly received by certain associations, including the Coalition for the Homeless, which had replied that “people settle in the metro because they have no better place to go”.