Officials released photos of the suspected shooter of five homeless men in New York City and Washington, D.C., Monday evening and raised the reward for his capture to $70,000 as part of the joint manhunt by both city police departments and the federal government.
The pictures show the face of the man that, law enforcement leaders say, shot three victims in the nation’s capital and two in the Big Apple over the past 11 days, and officials from the two cities called on the public to help them find the gunman who remains on the lam.
“Unless this person’s been living in a bubble and nobody knows this individual, somebody out there knows him and we’re just asking that that person call that information in,” said Robert Contee III, the chief of the District’s Metropolitan Police Department, during a press conference in that city on March 14.
The pictures appear to be taken from the vantage point of an ATM, but the police chief declined to say where they got them from, saying only the images were “recent.”
Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell joined the briefing with Contee and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, urging the public to help locate the repeat killer before he strikes again.
“Homelessness should not be a homicide. This was a cold-blooded attack,” said Adams. “Someone knows this person. We’re asking for the public find him. We don’t want to lose another resident in this city, in New York, anywhere else.”
The suspect’s spree began when he shot three unhoused men between March 3-9, injuring the first two and killing his third victim and setting the victim’s tent ablaze.
In the early hours of Saturday, March 12, he shot two more homeless men in Lower Manhattan, injuring his first victim and killing his second.
In each of the case the targets were homeless men and they were for the most part alone and asleep on the street when the gunman ambushed them.
Another homeless man whom cops found dead Sunday evening succumbed to “other medical conditions,” according to NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig, who said they don’t believe the case to be connected.
What started out as shootings in two separate cities became an interstate investigation when a D.C. police captain was scrolling through social media over the weekend and saw posts and pictures of the crimes that happened in New York, and alerted the higher ups about it, according to Contee.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has also joined the investigation, and the combined rewards for finding the perpetrator has risen to $70,000.
Law enforcement officials believe the man used the same gun for the crimes, and they have not linked him or the weapon to any other incidents.
They also didn’t say where he is from or how he traveled up the East Coast.
NYPD officers will still enforce Adams’s so-called Subway Safety Plan to boot the unhoused from mass transit, Hizzoner told reporters while slamming critics who denounced the city for criminalizing homelessness.
“There is nothing dignified by living on the subway tracks,” he said. “To even insinuate that giving people the dignity of being in housing will contribute to some sick mind of shooting them is something I’m just not going to entertain.”
“Because someone is loud, and they have a Twitter account, they do not speak for the people of New York City,” he added.
Anyone with information regarding the Manhattan shootings or the suspect’s whereabouts can call Crime Stoppers at 800-577-TIPS (for Spanish, dial 888-57-PISTA). You can also submit tips online at crimestoppers.nypdonline.org, or on Twitter @NYPDTips. All calls and messages are kept confidential.
