NEW YORK (AP) - Police were searching Monday for an unidentified man who stabbed and killed a 6-year-old boy and critically wounded a 7-year-old girl as they rode an elevator up to a Brooklyn apartment to get ice cream.
The New York Police Department flooded the East New York neighborhood with extra officers to assist in the manhunt and reassure frightened residents. Police described the attacker as a stranger who chose the victims randomly.
"This is particularly heinous crime," Police Commissioner William Bratton said. "Two young children in an elevator with no place to escape, nothing at all, and some character gets on and just starts stabbing them? ... (Residents) have every right to be concerned."
He added: "We're going to get this guy."
Before the attack at about 6 p.m. Sunday, the boy and girl had been playing together outside a city housing project under adult supervision. According to relatives and witnesses, they went inside alone to get some ice cream from the boy's sixth floor apartment when they were cornered by a heavyset man in his 20s.
The man used a steak knife to stab each child multiple times, police said. He fled on foot, leaving behind the knife.
Officers summoned to the scene found the boy, Prince Joshua Avitto, in the elevator and the other victim, Mikayla Capers, just outside the building, police said.
Avitto was pronounced dead at a hospital. Capers remained hospitalized in critical condition Monday.
Police were investigating whether the same man may have fatally stabbed an 18-year-old woman nearby on Friday.