Police have arrested a man following a string of five shootings – all targeting homeless people as they slept.
A masked gunman struck five times in nine days in both New York and Washington DC.
Two of the men died. One’s tent was set on fire, after he was stabbed and shot.
On Tuesday, only two days after a multi-state manhunt was launched, DC police said a suspect had been arrested for homicide.
DC’s Metropolitan Police Department had posted new photos of the suspect, offering a reward up to $55,000 (£$42,000) for tips that led to his arrest and conviction.
Hours later, they announced there had been an arrest.
According to detectives, the “modus operandi” had been the same in each case.
One man was shot on 3 March and another on 8 March – both in the middle of the night.
They were injured but survived.
Just a day later, emergency services responded to a tent fire in the city where they found a man inside who had been fatally shot and stabbed.
In New York, a masked suspect first shot a man sleeping on a street in Manhattan’s Soho neighbourhood in the early hours of the morning.
Around an hour later, according to police, that same person shot and killed another man also sleeping in Soho.
“We now have a cold-blooded killer on the loose,” DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and New York City Mayor Eric Adams had said in a joint statement.