NEW YORK (AP) – Police on Saturday arrested a fugitive suspected of stabbing his girlfriend and all three of her small children with a kitchen knife in a brutal attack at a hotel used as homeless housing, ending a four-day manhunt.
Michael Sykes was last seen on surveillance footage Wednesday heading to the Staten Island Ferry shortly after the fatal attack, and a call to his mother to say he’d killed his girlfriend and was going to kill himself, police said. But he took the ferry back to Manhattan and had been traveling through Brooklyn and Queens.
He was nabbed in Queens Saturday afternoon and brought back to a police precinct on Staten Island. He was arrested on three counts of murder, attempted murder and robbery charges. Sykes was in police custody Saturday night and couldn’t be reached for comment. It wasn’t immediately clear if he had an attorney who could comment on the allegations.
Rebecca Cutler, 26, her 19-month-old daughter Ziana and 4-month-old Maiyah died in the attack at a Ramada Inn on Staten Island. Two-year-old Miracle was in critical condition but was stable. Sykes was the father of Maiyah.
Shortly before the attack, Sykes bought a can of Coke and a Pop-Tart from a deli near the hotel, a worker there told the Staten Island Advance this week.