New York City Mayor Eric Adams called Monday's stabbing the latest victim of New York City's inaction, calling for the involuntary removal of mentally ill homeless people from the city's streets and into care facilities. He appealed to Albany state leaders for support.
“Everyone told me it's inhumane, we just want to put people in institutions,” Adams said at a news conference Tuesday. “Well, this is the result of not taking action and ignoring those who need help.”
Adams said city officials have failed to understand how flaws in the criminal justice and mental health systems have failed Ramon Rivera, the suspected killer who has been arrested eight times and killed three people on Monday. He said he would analyze it.
“Three New Yorkers were murdered in our city by someone who was betrayed by our health care system,” he said.
Suspect arrested in New York City 'unauthorized' stabbing, 3 dead: police
Ramon Rivera, 51, who is charged with three stabbing murders, is photographed leaving the NYPD's 10th Precinct building while in police custody on Monday, November 18, 2024. (Sam Costanza for New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
NYPD Chief of Detectives Joe Kenney said Rivera, 51, was arrested after a good Samaritan taxi driver contacted authorities.
Police said the man stabbed a 36-year-old man to death while he was standing outside a construction site on the city's West Side, then stabbed a second man multiple times in the body while he was fishing. Rivera allegedly attacked a woman a block away from the United Nations before being taken into custody. The woman later died.
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Ramon Rivera, 51, is accused of killing three people in a stabbing in Manhattan on Monday. (Fox News Digital)
Surveillance camera footage taken by a West 19th Street business and obtained by the New York Post shows Rivera donning gloves and preparing a knife before the attack, police said. This was revealed by law enforcement officials. new york post Rivera said he chose his victims because they were “lonely” and “distracted.”
Rivera has spent most of this year behind bars, completing his most recent sentence on Oct. 17 for a series of robbery and assault convictions. new york post Reported.
Rivera has a documented history of mental health issues, and public records show he has been arrested or known to law enforcement in three other states. has been done. NBC News reported.
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A homeless man used two kitchen knives, one of which had blood on it, to kill three people in New York City on Monday in a series of indiscriminate and unprovoked attacks, police said. (New York City Police Department)
Adams outlined steps the city has taken to keep mentally ill people off the streets and subways. That includes efforts to move toward small-scale mental health “clubhouses,” day centers that connect mentally ill people with the community, art therapy, and sometimes jobs.
But Adams said she needs help from the state Capitol. The Supportive Intervention Act, his bill that would give cities more power to force people who are unwell off the streets and into psychiatric treatment, has not yet passed.
Law enforcement officers work at the scene of a fatal stabbing near United Nations Headquarters in New York City on Monday, November 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
“We've been going up and down Albany advocating for this to be codified into law and to clarify our authority to deal with people with severe mental illness,” he said at a news conference Tuesday.
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Hours after Adams' press conference, Rivera was indicted in a Manhattan courtroom on three counts of first-degree serial murder.
