New developments in the series of attacks on homeless people in the United States

Washington police announced Tuesday the arrest of a man suspected of committing a series of nighttime attacks targeting sleepy homeless on the streets of the American capital and New York, killing two of them and wounding three others.

And the security forces explained in a tweet via Twitter that the suspect is "currently being interrogated" on the background of his suspected involvement in the crimes that took place in the two American cities during the past ten days.

The arrest of the man comes after the security forces in New York and Washington launched a large-scale pursuit to arrest the suspect.

"There is a ruthless criminal at large, but we will arrest him and put him in prison," the two Democratic mayors of the two major cities said in a joint statement yesterday.

"It is urgent, and it should not injure or kill anyone else," said the joint statement of New York Mayor Eric Adams and Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, who unusually held a joint press conference Monday night.

Adams and Bowser called on homeless people in New York and Washington to take shelter in shelters until the criminal was caught.

The two officials showed several pictures of the suspect, a bearded, shaved-headed and slender young man, and promised rewards of up to seventy thousand dollars for any information that helps identify the criminal.

Authorities said the man was responsible for at least five attacks, which were carried out "in cold blood and in the same manner against people sleeping on the streets".

New York Police Chief Kishant Saul also confirmed Monday that investigators have contacted their counterparts across the country to make sure he did not kill other victims, and noted that the homeless "struggle daily to survive," and promised to catch their executioner "quickly."

The first two attacks took place on March 3 and 8 in the northeast of the US capital.

The two victims, who were shot, survived.

In Washington as well, paramedics put out a fire on Wednesday, March 9th, in a homeless tent, in which they found the body of a man.

An autopsy showed that the death was caused by several gunshots and stab wounds.

Investigators indicated that the killer moved to New York, about 400 kilometers to the north.

On Saturday morning, a 38-year-old man was found shot but still alive in southern Manhattan.

On Saturday afternoon, police found another man in the same neighborhood, this time dead and with injuries to his head and neck.

CCTV footage shows that the suspect shot the man around 6 a.m., shortly after the previous attack.

The footage shows a man dressed in black with a hat on his head and wearing blue gloves, turning around to a man sleeping in a yellow sleeping bag and kicking him a little to make sure he's asleep and then taking a quick look around him before shooting him.

Washington Police Chief Robert Conte said that by examining these footage, an investigator found a link between the two attacks, which, according to Conte, represented "significant" progress.

Thousands of people sleep on the streets of New York every night, and the Democratic mayor announced in February a plan to drive homeless people into the giant subway system.

Eric Adams moved in after recording a series of headline-grabbing crimes, including the murder of a woman who was pushed by a mentally ill homeless person on the subway track.

Homeless advocacy groups, which oppose the plan to evict them from the subway system, have held Eric Adams partly responsible for the recent crimes.

The Coalition for the Homeless said that this group "is more likely to be victims of crimes than perpetrators," calling on the mayor "to acknowledge that his policies put them at risk."

Adams refused to enter into the controversy, saying only that "sleeping on the sidewalks of the metro system is not related to a decent life."

The number of homeless people in Washington has increased since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the associations accuse the authorities of removing a large number of tents that were sometimes placed in places close to the White House.

At a shelter near the Capitol, Troyes, a 53-year-old black American man who has lived on the streets for five years, told AFP he was affected by the crime wave but not surprised by it.

"When an attack targets someone close to you, it becomes painful," he said, but "a lot of bad things happen to the homeless...".

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