Day care worker stabs 3 infants and 2 adults in New York, police say

Kayla Cho woke up shortly after 3:30am Friday to the sound of screaming coming from a home on the block where she lives. Another neighbour, Mike Hsu heard loud thuds. Soon the high-pitched scream turned into a cry for help from what neighbours described as a day care in a red brick townhouse in Queens.

“A woman was screaming, ‘Help me! Somebody just help me!” Cho said.

Moments later, police swarmed the block and discovered a ghastly scene: three infants, including a 3-day-old child and two adults, had been stabbed by an employee who then cut her own wrist.

The stabbings occurred at about 3:40am at the facility, a residential day care centre in the Flushing neighbourhood, police said. The infants, all of whom were less than 1 month old, were taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. One of the adults who was stabbed was the father of one of the infants, police said; he was stabbed in the leg. The other adult was a co-worker of the employee and was stabbed in the torso, police said. All of the victims were in critical but stable condition.

The facility was first identified as a day care centre but according to the New York state Office of Children and Family Services, the facility was not a licensed or regulated child care program. Monica Mahaffey, a spokeswoman for the agency, said that state regulated child care programs are prohibited from caring for infants less than 6 weeks of age unless they meet additional requirements.

Some neighbours said they had seen pregnant Chinese women frequenting the facility, raising suspicions among some of them that it was also operating as a birthing hoel for Chinese visitors who want to secure US citizenship for their children.

But some officials also suggested that the home may have also served as a maternity facility for Chinese women who are in the United States legally but have no relatives to help them.

When officers first arrived at the location, the employee who had cut her own wrist was unconscious, police said. But she regained consciousness after officers applied a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, and the employee, 52, was placed in police custody.

The names of the five victims and the employee were not released.

© 2018 New York Times News Service