The victims, two women and one man, were found wounded at the Van Dyke Houses and are expected to recover.
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — A search was underway Sunday after three people were stabbed at the Van Dyke Houses in Brownsville, a daytime attack that sent two women and a man to hospitals and left residents shaken.
Police said the stabbings happened shortly after 1 p.m. on Dumont Avenue between Mother Gaston Boulevard and Powell Street. Officers responding to a 911 call found the victims suffering from stab wounds and rushed them for treatment. All three were expected to survive. What was still missing by Sunday evening was a public account of how the violence started, who the suspect was and whether the victims had any direct link to the attacker.
The injuries outlined by police suggested a chaotic and close-range assault. Authorities said a 25-year-old woman was stabbed in the lower abdomen, a 26-year-old woman was stabbed multiple times in the buttocks and back, and a 23-year-old man was stabbed in the chest. Investigators did not say which victim was attacked first or whether the three were together when the suspect struck. At the housing complex, police tape marked off part of the scene while officers guarded the area and detectives began their work. The attack happened in the middle of the afternoon, a detail that stood out in a residential development where people were likely to be moving through courtyards, sidewalks and building entrances.
For residents, the hour of the attack was part of the shock. One woman said the stabbing made her think she needed to be more alert to her surroundings because it happened during the day. Another summed up the mood more sharply, saying, “This is what goes down here. It’s crazy. It’s sad.” Their comments reflected fear, but also frustration at seeing another violent episode unfold in a neighborhood where public safety is a constant concern. Police, for their part, kept their public statements narrow. They said only that they were trying to figure out whether there was a connection between the suspect and the victims and that no arrest had been made.
The setting matters to the story. Van Dyke Houses sits in Brownsville, within the NYPD’s 73rd Precinct, and city records describe it as a major NYCHA campus with more than 1,700 apartments. A NYCHA community vision report for the development said residents had ranked security among their top concerns, pointing to issues such as building access, loitering, lighting and the broader safety of the surrounding area. The precinct’s public overview identifies Brownsville as part of its patrol area, and recent CompStat data showed felony assault complaints still forming a large share of serious crime in the command. Those records do not explain Sunday’s attack, but they help place it in a neighborhood where violence has a long public footprint.
Procedurally, the case had not moved beyond the early investigative phase by Sunday night. There was no arrest, no court filing and no public identification of a suspect. Police had not said whether any weapon had been recovered or whether detectives believed the attacker fled on foot, by car or into one of the surrounding buildings. They also had not said whether the victims were residents of the development. That leaves several of the most important questions unresolved: whether the stabbing grew out of a dispute, whether it was targeted and whether additional people were present when it happened. The next public turning point will come when police release more identifying information or announce an arrest.
Even with those unknowns, the picture at day’s end was clearer in one respect: the injuries were serious but not fatal. That gave the case a different tone than many violent-crime investigations, with attention focused both on finding the suspect and on whether the surviving victims can help explain what happened. In the meantime, the scene at Van Dyke Houses stood as a familiar kind of city crime tableau, sealed off by tape, watched by neighbors and defined by the gap between what happened in a few violent moments and what investigators still need to prove.
Police said all three victims were expected to survive, and the investigation remained open Sunday evening with the suspect still being sought.
Author note: Last updated March 30, 2026.