The “A-train Ripper” is in custody, multiple law enforcement sources told The Post on Saturday night.
The knife-wielding madman was wanted in a gruesome subway spree that left two homeless people dead and two others slashed along the A train line, and was nabbed in Upper Manhattan, the sources said.
His shoes were still splattered with his victims’ blood when he was taken into custody — and he was still in possession of the bloody knife, one source added.
The yet-named suspect was in custody at the 34th Precinct in Washington Heights, the sources said.
The bloodshed sparked an outcry for safer subways, and NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea responded, announcing a “surge” of 500 additional cops for the department’s Transit Bureau to be deployed across the city immediately.
The spree began Friday morning, not far from where the alleged stabber was caught, authorities said.
At 11:30 a.m., a 67-year-old man was stabbed as he pushed his walker along the southbound platform at the A train’s 181st Street station in Washington Heights.
“I am going to kill you!” he told cops his attacker screamed, according to sources. He was stabbed in the right knee and left buttocks; while he required surgery, he is expected to survive the attack.
That attack is preliminarily believed to be connected to three subsequent attacks.
Twelve hours later, at 11:29 p.m. Friday, a man was found stabbed to death but still slumped in his seat on an A train at Mott Avenue station in Far Rockaway.
He suffered stab wounds to his neck and torso, and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Some two hours after that, at 1:15 a.m. Saturday, a 44-year-old woman was found sprawled dead, again in a pool of blood, under her subway seat inside an A train at the 207th Street station in Inwood.
She had been stabbed throughout her body.
Afterward, at 1:28 a.m. Saturday, a 43-year-old man was randomly stabbed as he slept on a stairwell at the A train station at West 181st Street.
He stumbled to a nearby bank on West 181st Street, but collapsed before entering the vestibule, cops said.
The victim is being treated at an area hospital for four puncture wounds to his back, and is in stable condition.
The 44-year-old woman was taken to New York Presbyterian-Allen Hospital, where she was declared dead, according to authorities.
It is the worst subway stabbing spree since June of 2006, when a homeless serial slasher injured four people on a 13-hour rampage on trains in Harlem and Rockefeller Center. His victims all survived.
And it is the worst mass-violence against the homeless since 2019, when four homeless men were bludgeoned to death in their sleep one night in Manhattan’s Chinatown.
Mayor de Blasio recently waved off NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea’s public concerns of a recent spate of subway attacks, which included a straphanger shoved onto the tracks.
*story by The New York Post