The suspected killer in the Soho hotel murder is being tried in Arizona after committing crimes there. The Maracopa attorney refused to extradite the suspect back to New York to face murder charges here, instead suggesting the Manhattan district attorney is too soft with criminal charges. Tracie Strahan reports from Lower Manhattan.
The man sought in New York in the killing of a woman in a Manhattan hotel last month was due back in an Arizona courtroom Monday afternoon for a first hearing on his separate flight from justice case.
Raad Almansoori is being held without bond in Phoenix on charges of attempted murder and other counts associated with the separate stabbings of two women that occurred after he traveled to Arizona from New York.
Bond in the separate flight case is $5 million.
Almansoori was indicted Tuesday by a grand jury in Arizona’s most populous county in the subsequent stabbing attacks of two women in the Phoenix area.
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday that Almansoori, 26, was indicted in the Arizona stabbings on two counts each of attempted first degree murder, aggravated assault, and attempted sexual assault, as well as one count each of attempted armed robbery and theft of means of transportation.
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Almansoori is suspected of stabbing an 18-year-old woman at least three times in the neck in a McDonald’s restaurant bathroom in the suburban community of Surprise. Phoenix police have also named Almansoori a suspect in the attack a day earlier on a woman who was stabbed in her car in that city.
The women in both Arizona attacks survived, but New York police say Almansoori is a suspect in the killing of a woman in that city earlier in the month. The body of Denisse Oleas-Arancibia was found by staff on the floor of a SoHo hotel room. Officers said her death was determined to have been caused by blunt force trauma to the head and a broken clothes iron was found nearby.
The Arizona case has sparked a political feud between Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, a Republican, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat.
Mitchell has balked at sending Almansoori back to New York for prosecution before he is tried in Arizona in the stabbing attacks and implied that Bragg is lax on crime.
Some of Bragg’s critics have distorted his record for bringing charges against former President Donald Trump. He has also faced backlash for his office’s decision not to prosecute certain low-level offenses.
