Suspect in Brooklyn Stabbing Spree Is Captured
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Published: February 12, 2011

A fugitive with a knife, who the police said had left behind a calamity of murders and broken lives in Brooklyn, was captured by the police at Times Square Saturday morning after stabbing another victim on a subway train near there, investigators said.
Enlarge This Image
New York Police Department

The police said Maksim Gelman killed his stepfather, his girlfriend and her mother before wounding a driver, taking his car and hitting a pedestrian.

An all-night manhunt that led to several sightings in Brooklyn and Manhattan and to a cat-and-mouse chase through dark subway tunnels ended about 8:30 a.m., when the suspect, Maksim Gelman, 23, climbed up from the tracks, boarded a northbound No. 3 train and, the police said, stabbed a male passenger.

Witnesses aboard the train said it stopped after pulling out of Pennsylvania Station, one stop south of Times Square, and they told of moments of panic as the power went off and officers with flashlights and drawn guns ran through the cars toward the front where the attack had taken place.

“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.

Moments after the stabbing in a front car, officers closed in and Mr. Gelman was handcuffed and taken into custody by two officers. Details of his arrest and the subway stabbing were sketchy. But the police said the victim was rushed by an emergency medical team to Bellevue Hospital Center. His condition was not immediately known.

The arrest climaxed a 30-hour drama in which, investigators said, Mr. Gelman killed his stepfather, his former girlfriend and her mother in knife attacks in two apartments in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, then commandeered a car, stabbed the driver, ran down an elderly pedestrian and sped away.

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

In the apartment on East 27th Street near Emmons Avenue where they lived with Mr. Gelman’s mother, Svetlana Gelman, 48, the screaming two-minute argument ended about 5 a.m. on Friday, when, the police said, the young man attacked Mr. Kuznetsov with a kitchen knife, stabbing him numerous times.

The police were called, but by the time they arrived, Mr. Gelman had sped away in the Lexus and disappeared. The police released a picture of the 6-foot, 170-pound fugitive that was posted on news Web sites and blogs.

At 4:30 p.m. Friday, the police said, he entered the apartment of his girlfriend, Yelena Bulchenko, 20, and her mother, Anna Bulchenko, 56, on 24th Street near Avenue Y, where another argument ensued. Mr. Gelman fatally stabbed the older woman, investigators said. Shortly afterward, his girlfriend arrived and was ambushed by Mr. Gelman outside, the police said. She, too, was stabbed to death.

“She was a sweet girl,” said Phil Kiernan, 36. “I knew her since she was young.”

Mr. Kiernan recalled seeing Yelena Bulchenko’s body lying on the ground, with Mr. Gelman standing over her. “He’s screaming,” the neighbor said. “He’s killing her.” The man said she had been stabbed in the neck. “I didn’t know who it was at first,” he said. “You know right away a neck wound is bad.”

Mr. Gelman sped away in the Lexus, the police said, but he apparently found his way blocked by a dark green Pontiac Bonneville at East 24th Street and Avenue U. The police said he stormed out, stabbed the driver, Arthur DiCrescento, 60, and dragged him out of the vehicle.

Mr. Gelman then drove north on Ocean Avenue, but struck an elderly man crossing Avenue R. The victim was taken to Kings County Hospital, where he was reported to have died overnight. Mr. DiCrescento was taken to Lutheran Hospital.

The violence touched off an all-night manhunt for Mr. Gelman, who abandoned the commandeered Bonneville at 15th Street between Avenues H and I in Midwood, with the engine still running, and again disappeared.

At one point Friday night, the search, which involved hundreds of officers and a number of helicopters, centered on the neighborhood near East 18th Street and Avenue R in Brooklyn, not far from where the Bonneville was found.

Following reports of a man in the subway tunnels apparently walking on the catwalks, the chase led to the area around Pennsylvania Station shortly after 8 a.m. Saturday, then to a northbound No. 3 express that pulled out, heading for Times Square.

Mr. Gelman was believed to have climbed into the train from the tracks. The stabbing of the passenger apparently occurred as the train moved between the two stations. Dinesh Patel, 54, who operates a newsstand in the Times Square station, said he saw about 100 people running up the stairs from the platforms, heading for the turnstiles.

Mr. Patel said he also saw 10 to 15 police officers, some with machine guns, and two men carrying a stretcher. He said people were shouting: “Go out! Go out!”

“I thought something, terrorism, something like that,” Mr. Patel said.

Soon afterward, all the staircases to the platforms for the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 trains were closed with yellow police tape, and a confusion of people trying to make connections ensued. Barricades and more police tape went up, and riders said officers were letting them in one at a time, asking for names as potential witnesses, and other questions about what they might have seen.

Al Baker, C. J. Hughes and Ethan Wilensky-Lanford contributed reporting.