Pervaiz Shallwani, Victoria Bekiempis
Sept, 21, 2018
A 52-year-old babysitter accused of using a knife to stab five people—including three infant girls under her care—at a childcare facility early Friday morning in New York was suffering from “psychological distress,” authorities said.
The woman, identified by a senior NYPD official as Yu Fen Wang, was found unconscious in the basement of the three-story building with a slash wound to the wrist, authorities said.
A cleaver was on a kitchen counter near where Yu had come to rest, the official said. A second weapon—a bloody kitchen knife—was recovered in the first-floor bathroom, where the initial incident took place.
Yu has been arrested and charges are pending.
All of the victims—who include a two-week-old and two one-month-old girls, as well as an adult man and woman—are in stable condition at nearby hospitals, police said.
Police responded shortly before 4 a.m. to a 911 call at Mei Xin Care Inc., a licensed daycare center in Flushing section of Queens, and found the three infants with stab wounds to the abdomen, the official said.
Officers also found a man and woman who had been stabbed, who directed police to to the basement, where Wang had fled and locked the door, the official said.
Wang was taken to a local hospital and taken into custody.
The man and woman, 31 and 30 years old, respectively, have not been identified. The man was stabbed in the leg. The woman was stabbed about the body. Their injuries are not considered life-threatening. The woman works at the daycare, the official said.
In May, Upper West Side nanny Yoselyn Ortega was sentenced to life in prison, without parole, for the October 2012 murder of two children under her care.
Who takes a two week old to daycare?