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NEW YORK (AP) — A man carried out a string of stabbings across a swath of Manhattan on Monday morning, killing two people and critically wounding a third without uttering a word to his victims, officials said.

The 51-year-old suspect was in police custody after being found with blood on his clothes and the two kitchen knives he was carrying, authorities said. The suspect’s and victims’ names weren’t immediately released.

“Three New Yorkers. Unprovoked attacks that left us searching for answers on how something like this could happen,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a news conference. He called the violence “a clear, clear example” of failures in the criminal justice system and elsewhere.

The suspect, apparently homeless, had been sentenced in a criminal case a few months ago, the Democratic mayor said, without giving further details.

Investigators were working to understand what propelled the rampage, which happened within 2 1/2 hours.

“No words exchanged. No property taken. Just attacked, viciously,” said Joseph Kenny, the New York Police Department’s chief of detectives.

The first stabbing, on West 19th Street, killed a 26-year-old construction worker who was standing by his work site near the Hudson River a little before 8:30 a.m.

About two hours later and across the island of Manhattan, a 68-year-old man was attacked while fishing in the East River near East 30th Street.

Both men died, Kenny said.

The suspect then apparently traveled north near the riverfront. Around 10:55 a.m., a 36-year-old woman was stabbed multiple times near the United Nations headquarters on East 42nd Street, Kenny said. She is hospitalized in critical condition.

A passing cabdriver saw the third attack and alerted police on nearby First Avenue and East 46th Street, officials said. An officer soon apprehended the suspect.