A man stabbed three people on a strip of land. Manhattan Monday morning, killing two people and seriously injuring the third without saying a word to his victims, officials said.

The suspect, 51, was in custody after being found with blood on his clothing and two kitchen knives he was carrying, authorities said. The names of the suspects and victims were not immediately released.

“Three New Yorkers. Unprovoked attacks that left us searching for answers as to how something like this could happen,” the mayor said. Eric Adams said at a press conference.

Investigators were working to understand what sparked the rampage, which happened in less than two and a half hours.

“No words exchanged. No property taken. I just attacked, viciously,” said Joseph Kenny, the new York Chief of detectives of the police department. “He approached them and started attacking them with knives.”

The first stabbing, on West 19th Street, killed a 36-year-old construction worker who was standing near his construction site near the Hudson River a little before 8:30 a.m.

About two hours later, across 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 headed north near the river’s edge. 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 taxi driver saw the third attack and alerted police at nearby First Avenue and East 46th Street, officials said. A police officer quickly apprehended the suspect.

The bloodshed occurred in a major city where, as in others, crime has loomed large in political discourse and daily concerns in the years since pandemic lockdowns emptied the streets and caused disorder. So far, murders in New York in 2024 are down 14% in two years, but aggravated assaults are up about 12%, according to police statistics.

Some recent stabbings in public places have drawn attention, including a fatal attack at the Coney Island subway station just a few weeks ago.

Adams, a Democrat, called Monday’s violence “a stark, clear example” of failures in the criminal justice system and elsewhere.

The suspect in Monday’s rampage, who is apparently homeless, had been convicted in a criminal case a few months ago and was arrested in a robbery case last month, officials said.

The rampage came three years after a series of knife attacks at various locations along a subway line killed two people and injured two others within hours.

In 2019, four people sleeping under doorways and on sidewalks in Chinatown were beaten to death, and a fifth was seriously injured, early on a Saturday morning.