Elias Abuelazam
(Courtesy Fulton County Jail)
An artist's sketch of the stabbing suspect, released by the Michigan State Police
Elias Abuelazam in a mug shot taken after a traffic stop on Aug. 5.
(Arlington, VA Police Dept.)
A second mug shot of Abuelazam, taken by the Loudon Co., Va., Police Department, from an unrelated arrest.
ATLANTA -- A man arrested at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport Wednesday is a suspect in a series of at least 18 stabbings in three states, according to police.
Fourteen of the stabbings happened in Flint, Mich., three in Leesburg, Va., and one in Toledo, Ohio. According to officials, many of the stabbings appear to be racially motivated.
Flint court records show Judge Tracy Collier-Nix signed a warrant Thursday morning charging Elias Abuelazam, 33, with assault with intent to murder in the July 27 stabbing of Antwione Marshall.
Authorities said Abuelazam is an Israeli citizen in the US legally. He had an expired Israeli passport and was reportedly traveling on it at the time of his arrest at Hartsfield-Jackson.
According to Delta Air Lines officials, Abuelazam was scheduled to board a 10:15 p.m. flight from Gate E-17.
Michigan authorities said they tracked Abuelazam to Atlanta Wednesday. Genessee County Prosecutor David Leyton said investigators used technology to track Abuelazam to Kentucky. "Technology assisted law enforcement in locating the defendant near the airport in Louisville, Kentucky," he said.
Leyton said because of his proximity to an airport investigators asked the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to check flight databases. The TSA determined that Abuelazam booked recently purchased a flight from Atlanta To Tel Aviv, Israel.
At 9:30PM Wednesday Michigan State Police phoned Atlanta Police to tell them that Abuelazam was waiting to board a flight to Tel Aviv at Gate E-17. According to an Atlanta police incident report three officers approached the gate and had Abuelazam paged to the ticket counter. "He was taken into custody without incident when he approached the ticket counter in response to the page," said Atlanta Police Spokesperson Carlos Campos.
Passengers on the flight, which arrived Thursday in Tel Aviv, said the suspect was arrested at the boarding gate shortly before takeoff.
Sandra Hasegawa with U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed Abuelazam was taken into custody prior to boarding.
News conferences were held Thursday afternoon in Michigan and Virginia. Leesburg, VA Police Chief Joseph Price said they still have a lot of work to do in three stabbing investigations. "I'm confident in saying we can place Abuelazam in the Northern Virginia area during the time of our attacks," he said.
In Flint, Michigan, Prosecutor Leyton was more certain. "The suspect in the fourteen stabbing assaults in our community has been apprehended," he said.
Stabbing victim Etwan Wilson had some advice for the suspect: "You just need to find somebody to talk to whether it's going to be in prison, you need to get that off your chest, you just don't go around ruining other families," he said.
Abuelazam spent the day at the Atlanta Pretrial Detention Facility before he was transported to Atlanta Police Homicide Squad for questioning by Flint, Michigan police. A source told 11 Alive News that by the time they tried to question him, Abuelazam got a lawyer and refused to talk.
He was transported to the Fulton County Jail where he is being held pending an extradition hearing. He will appear before a Fulton County Superior Court Judge in the next few days. If he waives extradition, he could be taken back to Michigan immediately. If he fights extradition, it could take days or weeks before the legal process plays out.
MORE DETAILS
More than 500 tips came in from the public regarding a serial killer who police say attacked 18 men. Originally officials thought there were 20 related cases, but two of them have been ruled out.
Authorities were able to obtain search warrants and track the suspect electronically through several states, eventually into Georgia.
Thursday morning, Leesburg police spokesman Chris Jones told
The Detroit Free Press that the suspect had "strong ties" to the Flint and Leesburg areas and was arrested after "one of the tips developed into a strong investigative lead."
"He was friendly," said manager Abdullah Farrah. "He was a nice guy."
Late Wednesday, police in Michigan raided a home in Flint. On the trash outside the home next door, a brown box with Reebok shoes inside had a shipping label with Abuelazam's name printed on it.
The attacks began in the Flint area and are believed to be racially motivated. Most of the victims have been middle-age to older African American or Latino men, while the victim in Toledo was white.
"I believe his motivation is pure hatred," Leesburg Police Chief Joseph Price said at a Tuesday news conference in which he released a short video clip of the vehicle the suspect drove after attacking a 19-year-old man with a hammer. He said police also have footage of that attack but won't be releasing it.
Out of the 18 victims who have been attacked since May, police say five have died.
The most recent attack was on Saturday in Toledo, Ohio. A minister was stabbed outside of his church while smoking a cigarette, according to Genesee County, Ohio prosecutor David Leyton.
At first, investigators said they were not sure the attack was linked to the serial killer, but now investigators suspect all of the attacks are related.
Police have described the attacker as a muscular white male in his late 20s to early 30s, about 5-foot-11 to 6-foot-2, with light colored hair and a "industrial" stud earring in his upper ear. Investigators said he usually wears a baseball cap and drives an older model dark green Chevrolet Blazer.
(The Associated Press, The Detroit Free Press and NBC News contributed to this report.)