2010-08-13 10:18

ATLANTA – Elias Abuelazam was about to board a plane for Israel when police arrested him in connection with a three-month stabbing spree that left five men dead, 13 others wounded and a Michigan city in terror. In the moments before the bald, pudgy man in flip-flops and shorts was handcuffed, passengers saw him nervously talking on his cell phone, insisting he wasn't violent.

This undated photo released by the Arlington, Va., County Police Department shows Elias Abuelazam. Abuelazam, suspect in a string of 18 stabbings that terrorized people across three states and left five dead, was charged Thursday, August 12, 2010 with assault with intent to murder in connection with a July 27 stabbing in Flint, Michigan. [Agencies]

The Israeli citizen and legal US resident was charged Thursday in just one case out of Flint, Mich., the battered industrial city where most of the stabbings occurred, but authorities said more charges are expected there and in Ohio and Virginia. At least 15 of the 18 victims were black but it was unclear whether the attacks were racially motivated.

Flint residents hope the arrest ends their summer of fear. Roughly every four days since late May on average, the killer approached men on lonely roads at night, asking for directions or help with a broken-down car. Then he'd pull out a knife, plunge it into his victim and speed away; in one case he used a hammer. The youngest victim was 15; the oldest 67.

Abuelazam, 33, was arrested late Wednesday at a boarding gate at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport shortly before his plane to Tel Aviv was to take off. Officers seized him after he was paged over the intercom and told to report at a ticket counter. He has been booked into the Fulton County Jail awaiting an extradition hearing in the next few days.

Passengers on the Delta Air Lines flight were stunned but said Abuelazam appeared tense. He was talking to someone on his cell phone "about not being violent and different things like that," passenger Eugene Williams said after the plane landed in Tel Aviv.

Abuelazam's mother, Iyam al-Azzam, told Israel Radio that she talked to her son by phone before he was supposed to board "and he sounded the same as usual, quiet and calm."

She said she was getting ready to pick her son up at the airport when relatives told her he had been arrested. "I do not believe these charges are true," she said. "Elias, my son, is a religious, God-fearing man who always assists anyone who needs help."

In Ramla, a mixed Israeli Jewish-Arab working class town between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the shabby, two-story house where the suspect's mother and sister live was dark late Thursday. Neighbors, who refused to give their names, said the family is Christian but told reporters little else.

In Michigan, Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton said authorities don't know the motive for the stabbings, and that despite the fact that most victims were black there is no evidence race played a role.

Killed were David Motley, 31, Emmanuel A. Muhammad, 59, Darwin Marshall, 43, and Arnold R. Minor, 49, all of Flint, and Frank Kellybrew, 60, of Flint Township. All died before Aug. 4, when Michigan authorities concluded the attacks were the work of one serial killer.

A tip late Tuesday — one of more than 500 received in the stabbings — led police to a market near Flint where Abuelazam worked. Leyton said investigators talked to employees, and a store video showed that he matched the description of the man wanted by authorities.