Police are probing whether the vicious stabbing of a 17-year-old girl on her way home from work Monday night is connected to another mysterious stabbing of a woman in front of her house in June, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
The teen, identified by relatives as Natasha Martinez, finished her shift at a Queens McDonald's and went to a bodega to buy a sandwich on her way home, police and her mother said. She was then attacked from behind and stabbed 10 times.
"I don't know what happened, if he was on drugs or if he wanted to kill her," her mother, Wendy Martinez, said in Spanish on Tuesday.
On June 25, a 36-year-old woman on her way to work early in the morning was attacked by a knife-wielding man outside her Queens home and stabbed seven times.
The victims in both cases survived with critical injuries.
"We're looking at similarities between this and an event that happened in Queens, it's a distance away -- 105th Precinct -- that happened on June 25," Kelly said. "We're seeing if it's a pattern here."
Kelly said investigators were also looking at video from Monday to see if the suspect may have started following Martinez from McDonald's or the bodega.
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"In this most recent case, we have no motive, no reason to think there was any contact between the victim and this individual prior to the assault," said Kelly.
A neighbor in the first attack in June told NBC 4 New York that he rushed to help the woman after he heard noises from the street.
"I heard her yelling and I could not believe it, because she made loud noise," said Wilner Nau. "Whoever was doing it, ran."
A man wearing a hooded sweatshirt was seen running from the scene in that attack. And in the stabbing Monday, police released surveillance video of a possible suspect, also wearing a hooded sweatshirt.
The victim of the June 25 stabbing, identified by relatives as Kerline Denizard, was attacked not far from her uncle's home.
"I know they are going to catch that guy," Taylor Antoine said Wednesday. "This is my belief. This guy has to pay for what he's doing."
-- Brynn Gingras contributed to this report.
