Elias Abuelazam: The Multi-State Serial Stabber
Leesburg, Virginia
Although the cops and citizens of Flint remained on alert, the stabbings there ceased after the death of Arnold Minor. A day later, however, similar attacks began in Leesburg, Va., a small town near Washington, D.C., approximately 600 miles southeast of Flint. Three stabbing attacks in Leesburg occurred in quick succession, according to America's Most Wanted, which featured the violent assaults and a profile of the suspect on its program a short time later in the hope that it would help identify and apprehend the perpetrator.
The first Leesburg victim was Anthony Kage Jr., 15, who was jogging near his home on August 4, 2010, at about 9:30 p.m., according to WILX-10 News, when the driver of a passing vehicle got out and stabbed the unsuspecting teen.
"The next thing he knows, he feels this stab and this stinging, and he looks back and the guy is running back to his vehicle," said Kage's mother, Virginia Scott-Bey Kage.
She said that her son collapsed at a nearby gas station. Doctors determined that his liver and kidney had been pierced, but he survived following three hours of surgery.
The next day, a man driving a green Chevy Blazer was stopped in nearby Arlington on a traffic violation and held for a short time on an old misdemeanor assault arrest warrant. The Blazer was impounded, and police found a knife and a hammer inside. The Blazer's owner was identified as Elias Abuelazam, 33, a legal resident alien from Israel; he was released a short time later after posting bail and his vehicle was returned to him. At the time of his arrest on the outstanding assault warrant, there was no information available to Virginia police linking him to Anthony Kage's stabbing or to the attacks in Michigan.
That night, after police released Abuelazam, a 67-year-old Leesburg man was stabbed outside his apartment. Although he lost a kidney in the incident, the man survived.
The following day, August 6, 2010, a 19-year-old Leesburg man was struck in the head with a hammer by an unknown assailant after the assailant asked him for help with his vehicle. He, too, survived the attack, likely because the hammer blow he received had not been a direct hit and he ran away before his attacker could hit him again. A nearby video surveillance camera recorded a person driving a green blazer through a parking lot only moments before the hammer attack.
Two of the Leesburg victims were black, and one was a Hispanic teenager. Each was able to provide the police with a similar description of the man who attacked him as well as his vehicle, and the descriptions were nearly identical to those provided to police in Flint. By the time police began to piece the information together, Abuelazam was nowhere to be found. Interestingly, all three of the Leesburg attacks occurred near that city's police department.