Suspect in Brooklyn Stabbing Spree Is Captured

A fugitive with a knife, who the police said had left behind a calamity of murders and broken lives in Brooklyn, was captured by officers at Times Square on Saturday morning after stabbing another victim on a subway train, investigators said.

It was the culmination of a roller-coaster of violence that included three fatal stabbings; a hit-and-run homicide; four other stabbings; four auto thefts, including two carjackings; death threats against several others who got in the way; a dangerous manhunt by hundreds of police officers; and for millions of New Yorkers a round-the-clock ordeal of a killer on the loose in the city.

The all-night manhunt led to several sightings in Brooklyn and Manhattan and to a cat-and-mouse chase through dark subway tunnels that ended shortly before 9 a.m. when the suspect, Maksim Gelman, 23, climbed up from the tracks, boarded a northbound No. 3 train and confronted a 40-year-old passenger, Joseph Lozito.

“You are going to die,” Mr. Gelman said, according to Mr. Lozito’s sister, then slashed Mr. Lozito in the back of the head.

The police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said that moments later, Mr. Gelman pounded on the door of the motorman’s compartment, identifying himself as a police officer and demanding entry. Two transit officers were in the compartment with the motorman, scanning the tracks ahead for Mr. Gelman.

They opened the door, saw the fugitive with his knife and a man bleeding on the floor, and leapt out. In the ensuing fight, Officers Terrance Howell and Tamara Taylor subdued, disarmed and handcuffed Mr. Gelman, with help from an off-duty detective, Marcelo Razzo. Mr. Lozito was taken from the train at 40th Street and Seventh Avenue to Bellevue Hospital Center, where he was reported in stable condition.

Mr. Kelly said he had never encountered a crime spree like Mr. Gelman’s. “It’s so horrendous and bizarre,” he said at an afternoon news conference. “Obviously, if he wasn’t apprehended this morning, he could have injured, killed, many more people.”

The commissioner said Mr. Gelman had a record of 10 arrests dating to 2003, mostly for graffiti-writing but also for robbery and possession of crack cocaine. It was unclear if he had any history of mental illness. Asked if the suspect had made any statements, the commissioner cited only one — “She has to die,” an apparent reference to his former girlfriend, one of his victims.

Witnesses on the train said it had pulled out of Pennsylvania Station and rolled north, but had stopped suddenly as it approached the Times Square station. They told of panic as the power went off and officers with flashlights and drawn guns ran toward the front, while riders ran back, fleeing the violence.

“At first I thought it was just a mechanical problem, and then we heard all these people saying there’d been a stabbing in one of the cars,” said Danielle Nugent, 23, a graduate student at Quinnipiac University who was in town to run a race in Riverside Park.

The arrest was the climax of a 28-hour drama in which, the police said, Mr. Gelman killed his mother’s companion as well as his former girlfriend and her mother in knife attacks at two apartments in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, then seized a car, stabbed the driver, fatally struck a pedestrian and sped away.

The swirl of violence stunned the Russian and Ukrainian communities in Sheepshead Bay, where Mr. Gelman had lived for years and was known to neighbors as a troubled, unemployed man with a drug habit and a hair-trigger temper. Investigators said his last rage may have been touched off by the refusal of his mother’s companion, Aleksandr Kuznetsov, 54, a private-ambulette driver, to let him use the family Lexus.

In the apartment on East 27th Street, near Emmons Avenue, where they lived with Mr. Gelman’s mother, Svetlana Gelman, 48, the two-minute argument ended at about 5:10 a.m. on Friday, when, the police said, the young man stabbed Mr. Kuznetsov with a kitchen knife 11 or 12 times. Mrs. Gelman, who was not injured, called the police, but by the time they arrived, Mr. Gelman had driven away in the gray 2004 Lexus. The police released a picture of the 6-foot, 170-pound fugitive that was posted on news Web sites and blogs.

About 10 a.m., the police said, he entered the apartment of his former girlfriend, Yelena Bulchenko, 20, and her mother, Anna Bulchenko, 56, on East 24th Street, near Avenue Y. The younger woman was not there, but an argument with her mother followed. Mr. Gelman killed the older woman, stabbing her a dozen times, investigators said.

Investigators said he then waited for more than six hours until Yelena Bulchenko arrived home, about 4:15 p.m. He attacked her inside and outside the apartment. She, too, was stabbed to death, the victim of a dozen wounds.

“She was a sweet girl,” said Phil Kiernan, 36. “I knew her since she was young.” He recalled seeing Yelena Bulchenko’s body lying on the ground, with Mr. Gelman standing over her.

Mr. Gelman again sped away in the Lexus, the police said, but was apparently blocked by a dark green Pontiac Bonneville at East 24th Street and Avenue U. The police said he rammed the Bonneville, then got out and pulled out the driver, Arthur DiCrescento, 60, and stabbed him in the chest. (Mr. DiCrescento was taken to Lutheran Medical Center, where he was reported in stable condition.) Four knives were found in the abandoned Lexus.

Mr. Gelman then took the Bonneville and drove north on Ocean Avenue. He struck a 62-year-old man, Stephen Tannenbaum, crossing Avenue R. The victim was taken to Kings County Hospital, where he died overnight. As hundreds of officers joined the manhunt, at 8 p.m. Friday the search centered on East 18th Street near Avenue R, where Mr. Gelman was reported hiding in a garage. He was not found. At 9:15 p.m., the Bonneville was found in Midwood, the engine running.

Mr. Gelman was next seen at 12:50 a.m. Saturday at Rochester Avenue and St. Johns Place in Crown Heights, where, the police said, he hailed the livery cab of Fitz Fullerton, 55. Trying to commandeer the car, Mr. Gelman stabbed Mr. Fullerton in the shoulder and neck, and the cab struck another vehicle.

Mr. Gelman jumped out and fled. Minutes later, the police said, he attacked another motorist, Sheldon Pottinger, 25, on Eastern Parkway near Rockaway Avenue. “I was just waiting for my wife and this guy ran up, pulled out a knife and said, ‘I’m gonna kill you — get out of the car’ and started stabbing,” Mr. Pottinger recalled.

The police said Mr. Pottinger was slashed across the hand and jumped out of his car during a struggle. The attacker drove off in the black 2001 Nissan, which was found abandoned in Queens near a subway station.

Mr. Gelman may have entered the subway system there, investigators said. Following reports of a man seen in the tunnels, apparently walking along tracks and third-rail coverings, the police began scouring the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 lines, walking the tracks and riding in slow-moving trains.

The breakthrough occurred about 8:30 a.m., when two witnesses reported seeing Mr. Gelman on a southbound No. 1 train between 137th and 96th Streets in Manhattan. One called 911. The other, a woman, was reading a newspaper when a man, apparently Mr. Gelman, moved close.

Mr. Kelly related, “He knocks the paper out of her hand and says, ‘Do you believe what they’re writing about me?’ ”

Frightened, the woman got off at 96th Street, told a police officer what had happened and the word was passed to officers who had set up a check-point at Penn Station, at 34th Street. Mr. Kelly said Mr. Gelman left the No. 1 train at 34th Street, and, avoiding platforms and stairways, walked across the tracks to a northbound No. 3 train that was just pulling out, heading for Times Square.

Mr. Gelman climbed from the tracks into the train between the first and second cars. Mr. Lozito was slashed in the first car as the train rumbled through the tunnel. Mr. Gelman then attempted to get into the motorman’s compartment, which covered the front end of the train. “We assume that he wanted to injure the motorman or take control of the train, something along those lines,” Mr. Kelly said. He said none of the officers were injured in the confrontation with Mr. Gelman.

The commissioner said Mr. Gelman had apparently not changed clothes overnight and was believed to have passed the early morning hours wandering the tracks of a Long Island Rail Road freight line that traverses Queens and Brooklyn. Mr. Kelly said Mr. Gelman had often scrawled graffiti along the line. Charges against Mr. Gelman were pending.

Andre Lev, 35, of Nyack, N.Y., who identified himself as the brother of Yelena Bulchenko, said in an interview at his sister’s home that he had never heard of Mr. Gelman and did not believe that his sister had any romantic ties to him. Acquaintances of the family agreed, saying Mr. Gelman had sought a relationship with her but had been rebuffed.