Police Arrest Suspect in Stabbings of 2 Brooklyn Children

Daniel St. Hubert, 27, was carrying a kitchen knife when he was arrested, an official said

Police have arrested a 27-year-old man on parole for assault for allegedly stabbing two children in a Brooklyn elevator, killing one of them and critically injuring the other, a law enforcement official says. 

Daniel St. Hubert was arrested in the Ozone Park section of Queens shortly after police identified him as a suspect in the Brooklyn stabbings at a news conference Wednesday evening, according to the official.

Investigators had received a tip about a cell phone St. Hubert had that enabled them to track the phone's pings, the official said. That in part led police to start staking out a home of a known associate of St. Hubert.

He was carrying another kitchen knife with him when he was found, the official said.

It wasn't immediately known whether he had an attorney. 

St. Hubert was paroled on May 23 for domestic assault, and has a violent past that includes attacks on a corrections officer and a police officer, authorities said at a news conference Wednesday evening. Police say he's been arrested nine times in the past.

Law enforcement sources told NBC 4 New York earlier Wednesday that police made a preliminary DNA match on the knife used in the attack on 6-year-old Prince Joshua Avitto and his 7-year-old playmate Mikayla Capers. The boy was killed in the brutal stabbing and the girl was critically injured. 

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton would only say that police had forensic evidence linking St. Hubert to the crime.

Investigators have said the attack appeared to be random, and may be linked to the deadly stabbing of a teen blocks away two days earlier.

The suspect attacked the children with a steak knife in the building on Schenck Avenue in East New York, police said. They were both stabbed in the torso, and were believed to be on their way to get frozen treats.

The little girl has a collapsed lung and is fighting for her life, her family said.

Dozens of officers have been assigned to the corner of Schenck and Stanley avenues in one of New York's most violent neighborhoods as part of the investigation. 

It does not appear St. Hubert is homeless, as Avitto's father originally believed

-- Andrew Siff, Marc Santia and Gus Rosendale contributed to this report. 

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