Ramon Rivera, a 51-year-old homeless man with a history of mental health issues, was arrested after fatally stabbing three people in Manhattan. The seemingly random attacks have sparked concerns about the city's handling of homelessness and mental illness.
Tall and dishevelled, with a scraggly salt-and-pepper beard, Ramon Rivera was just one month out of jail when he approached a construction worker early Monday and fatally stabbed him without saying a word, police said.The 51-year-old made his way across Manhattan and, more than two hours later, police and prosecutors said, he fatally stabbed a fisherman and then a woman sitting on a park bench.Ramon Rivera appears for his arraignment in New York Criminal Court on Tuesday.
"We always hear something is being done but nothing changes, and every six months something unthinkable happens," said Mary Brosnahan, who for three decades led the Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy and service organization.Deadly alcohol poisoning casts shadow over the Laotian backpacker townRep.
In May, police records obtained by CNN show, Rivera spent time at the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward in Manhattan, where he was involved in an assault on a correction officer. At the recommendation of prosecutors, the judge ordered supervised release, a program the city touts as providing "community-based supervision and support" for people with pending cases."We do not want to set you up for failure, but we do want to connect you with services and to make sure that you're coming to court," the judge told Rivera.It's unclear what, if any, services Rivera received in the month leading up to the stabbings.
The charges in the larceny case were "not bail eligible, meaning he can't be held behind bars unless convicted," the Manhattan DA's office said in a statement Friday. In the Bronx, he got an adjournment contemplating dismissal in June for a case involving the theft of steaks from a supermarket, according to prosecutors.
One of Rivera's encounters with the NYPD occurred on November 19, 2023, when officers found him lying on a curb.The next month, the records show, he called police to say he was "feeling suicidal and homicidal." An ambulance took him to a hospital. At around 8:20 a.m., Lata Landi, 36, a Peekskill, New York, resident, was standing in front of a construction site near Chelsea when a bearded man approached him and, without provocation, stabbed him in the abdomen, police said.At around 10:25 a.m., Manhattan resident Chang Wang, 67, was fishing near the East River when he was stabbed multiple times in the abdomen.At around 10:55 a.m.
He addressed critics of his policies, including a controversial directive two years ago allowing first responders to enforce a directive that empowers them to involuntarily commit people experiencing a mental health crisis.
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