NEW YORK — Authorities in New York City and the nation’s capital appealed for help Monday in an urgent search for a gunman who has been stalking homeless men asleep on their streets, killing at least two people and wounding three others in less than two weeks.
The mayors of two of the country’s largest cities vowed to swiftly apprehend the suspect with help from civilian tips and surveillance photographs, including one snapshot of the suspect’s face released by police at a news conference Monday.
“We know that our unsheltered residents already face a lot of daily dangers and it is unconscionable that anybody would target this vulnerable population,” said the mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser, during the news conference in her city.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who joined Bowser at the press conference, said the gunman is carrying out his attacks in a premeditated manner.
“He looked around. He made sure no one was there. And he intentionally took the life of an innocent person,” Adams said.
The killer’s motive — if any — was unknown. Authorities have turned their attention to trying to offer what protections they can to homeless people who might become targets.
Adams said New York City police and homeless outreach teams would focus on finding unhoused people in the subways and other locations to urge them to seek refuge at city-owned shelters.
In Washington, city outreach workers were passing out flyers among the homeless population, urging people to “be vigilant” and featuring multiple pictures of the suspect.
D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee said there was ballistic evidence tying the shootings in the two cities, adding that one of his homicide captains — a former resident of New York City — began investigating a link while scrolling through social media over the weekend and noticing similarities between surveillance photos obtained by New York City police and his own department.
“Our reach is far and wide, and we’re coming for you,” Contee said at the news conference, speaking directly to the suspect.
The latest violence underscored the urgency to get the homeless off the streets and into safe housing, said Jacquelyn Simone, the policy director for the Coalition for the Homeless in New York City.
“The reason that these people were attacked is because they didn’t have that safety of permanent housing,” she said. “And that’s why we really need to use these tragedies as an opportunity to redouble our efforts to ensure that people have a better option than the streets where they’re exposed to both the elements as well as people who might wish to do them harm.”
The earliest known shooting happened at around 4 a.m. March 3 in Washington D.C., police said, when a man was shot and wounded in the city’s Northeast section. A second man was wounded on March 8, just before 1:30 a.m.
At 3 a.m. the next day, March 9, police and firefighters found a dead man inside a burning tent. A subsequent autopsy revealed that the man had died of multiple stab and gunshot wounds.
The killer then apparently traveled north to New York City, police said.
At 4:30 a.m. Saturday, a 38-year-old man sleeping on the street in Manhattan not far from the entrance to the Holland Tunnel was shot in his right arm as he slept.
The victim screamed and the gunman fled, police said.
About 90 minutes later, the gunman fatally shot another man on Lafayette Street in SoHo, police said. The man’s body was found in his sleeping bag just before 5 p.m. Saturday.
