Four homeless men beaten to death with metal pipe as they slept on street in New York, 24-year-old suspect in custody
CHINATOWN, NEW YORK CITY: A violent killing spree on the streets of New York City took the lives of four homeless men and left one severely injured after they were battered on their heads as they slept on Saturday.
The men were attacked while they were sleeping on a street in Manhattan's Lower East Side in the city's Chinatown district around 2 am.
The NYPD confirmed that four men were killed in the attack and that a 24-year-old suspect who was carrying a 'metal object' is in custody.
The police believe that the victims were attacked in their sleep with an object resembling a metal pipe. At a news conference, Michael Baldassano, the chief of Manhattan South detectives, described the object as a "pipe" and said it was about three feet long and similar to a construction stud, New York Times reported.
The newspaper also reported that the police have "tentative" IDs for the victims, who were all believed to be homeless. "The motive appeared to be 'random attacks' and that no one was targeted by race, age, anything by that nature," Chief Baldassano said.
A 911 call "from an uninvolved party" alerted the authorities at 1:50 am on Saturday, Lieutenant Antonetti said, adding that they found one man dead and another injured in Chinatown near Manhattan's Bowery neighborhood.
They then discovered three more men dead about three blocks away. Two of the men were found outside 2 East Broadway and the third man outside 17 Broadway, the NYPD said.
"He kills two guys together—two guys are sleeping together," the official said. "Then he kills two more around the corner."
Head wounds were the common link among all the victims.
The fifth victim was taken to the hospital and is still in a critical condition at New York Downtown Hospital.
Over 3,588 people were living on the streets in New York City according to a January 2019 report.