Suspect accused of brutally stabbing children in elevator arrested

The man accused of brutally stabbing two children on the elevator on their way getting ice cream has been arrested.

27-year-old Daniel St. Hubert was arrested for the murder of 6-year-old Prince Joshua (P.J.) Avitto and the near-fatal stabbing of 7-year-old Mikayla Capers.

St. Hubert was arrested by detectives around 8 p.m. Wednesday.

He was arrested around the same time that Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce identified St. Hubert by name for the first time as the suspect in the attack.

Hubert, a paranoid schizophrenic who spent five years in jail for trying to strangle his mom with an electrical cord was operating with barely no safety net after being released from prison.

The state gave him no medication and no psychiatric referral, releasing the murderous ticking time bomb from prison on an unsuspecting public.

Nine days after he walked out of the upstate Clinton Correctional Facility, police say, he used a steak knife to kill a 6-year-old boy and seriously hurt his 7-year-old playmate at a Brooklyn housing project.

Investigators are considering the possibility the suspect may be responsible for another fatal stabbing that occurred just two days earlier and blocks away.

Tanaya Copeland, 18, was found in the same neighborhood Friday night, unconscious and unresponsive with multiple stab wounds to her torso. Copeland was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, police said.

The close proximity of the incidents, as well as similarities in the type of weapons used, have led detectives to believe the two cases may be related.

“We have to proceed as if they are aligned,” Boyce said. “The knives are very similar. The proximity is four blocks. We have a basic description of the male.”

Source: NY Daily News, CNN