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(NEW YORK) — New York City police are searching for the suspect who killed a 77-year-old man and a 78-year-old woman by stabbing them and setting them on fire in their Queens home, likely while searching for property to steal, sources said.

Neighbors reported a man knocking on doors on Monday, asking to charge a cell phone, with at least one neighbor turning the man away before he approached the victim’s house, the sources told ABC News.

Detectives believe they have identified the suspect, who has an extensive criminal record and was released from prison in 2023, sources said.

Surveillance video showed the suspect knocking on the victims’ back door and the 77-year-old victim opening it and letting him in around 10:15 a.m., according to sources.

Detectives believe the suspect spent five hours in the victims’ house, according to sources, likely searching for property to steal before setting it ablaze.

Surveillance video also showed the suspect leaving the home at 3:08 p.m., shortly before the house went up in flames, sources said.

Neighbors called the victim’s son, a New York City Fire Department paramedic who was off duty at the time of the fire, who rushed home to discover his parents dead, sources said.

The fire department responded to the location and put the fire out, the New York Police Department said in a statement. EMS pronounced both victims deceased at the scene.

The woman was found lying on the first floor and accelerant appeared to have been poured on her body, starting the fire, sources said.

The man was found in the basement where he was tied with bungee cords to a column supporting the house, sources said. He was also set on fire but that fire appeared to have extinguished itself, sources said.

The suspect is described as a male, with a dark complexion, approximately 30 to 40 years of age, medium build, and was last seen wearing a black hat, a black jacket, blue jeans, and black sneakers, according to the NYPD.

Anyone with information regarding this incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at https://crimestoppers.nypdonline.org, or on X @NYPDTips.

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(SURFSIDE, Fla.) — More than four years after the deadly collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium complex in Surfside, Florida, federal investigators are expected to announce their preliminary findings on Tuesday regarding the cause of the tragedy.

“It is more likely that the collapse initiated in the pool deck than the tower,” a slide deck prepared ahead of today’s National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee meeting states.

Champlain Towers South was an oceanfront complex just north of the Miami Beach city line. The collapse of the structure killed 98 people in the middle of the night in June 2021.

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology have preliminarily concluded that the pool deck started to collapse more than seven minutes before the building fell to the ground, confirming what was suggested in earlier media reports.

The exact cause of the collapse has been under investigation in the years since the incident, but investigators have long focused part of their attention on the pool deck.

“At the time of the failure, the pool deck’s slab-column connections had critically low margins of safety,” the presentation notes. “The bulk of the critically low margins of safety was caused by design understrength and misplaced slab reinforcement.”

Officials noted in their presentation that issues with the pool deck existed from the time Champlain Towers South was built more than four decades ago.

“The structure had low resistance to progressive collapse, allowing the collapse of the pool deck to spread into and throughout the middle and east parts of the tower,” the slides added.

The federal probe into the collapse has been delayed several times. The final investigative report was previously expected to be completed in 2025, but that goal has since been pushed back another year.

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(NEW YORK) — The Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack on the World Trade Center is still killing New York City firefighters 24 years later.

On Tuesday, the New York City Fire Department will remember 39 members who died in the past year of illnesses related to their work during the rescue and recovery efforts at what was then known as The Pile.

Their names will be added to the FDNY World Trade Center Memorial Wall during a Tuesday afternoon ceremony at the department’s Brooklyn headquarters. The inscription on the wall says, “Dedicated to the memory of those who bravely served this department protecting life and property in the City of New York in the rescue and recovery effort at Manhattan Box 5-5-8087 World Trade Center.”

The FDNY has lost more than 400 members to World Trade Center illnesses, surpassing the 343 firefighters killed on 9/11 itself.

Overall, 2,753 people were killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Thursday will mark 24 years since the terror attacks. The annual commemoration ceremony at the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan will begin at 8:40 a.m. Thursday.

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(FORT PIERCE, Fla.) — One hundred and twenty potential jurors are in federal court in Fort Pierce, Florida, Tuesday for the second day of jury selection in the criminal trial of Ryan Routh, the man accused of trying to kill Donald Trump on his golf course last year.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — who oversaw and dismissed one of Trump’s criminal cases — hopes to have a jury finalized by Wednesday afternoon, with the trial expected to take approximately three weeks.

The jury selection process so far has gone slowly, with Routh — who is representing himself despite not being a lawyer and having limited legal experience — requesting to ask potential jurors questions that Cannon deemed “politically charged” and irrelevant.

Among the questions Judge Cannon has barred Routh from asking are those involving jurors’ stance on Palestine, their opinion of Trump’s proposed acquisition of Greenland, and what they would do if they were driving and they saw a turtle in the middle of the road — which Routh said could speak to jurors’ character and mindset.

After a full day of jury selection on Monday, prosecutors successfully challenged twenty potential jurors due to concerns that they could not judge the case fairly, with Routh agreeing to all but one of the removals. Routh signaled he plans to challenge seven of the jurors.

Prosecutors allege that after planning his attack for months, Routh hid in the bushes of Trump’s Palm Beach golf course with a rifle in the predawn hours of Sept. 15.

With Trump just one hole away from Routh’s position, a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle poking out of the tree line and fired at him, causing him to flee, according to prosecutors. Routh was subsequently arrested after being stopped on a nearby interstate.

Routh has pleaded not guilty to five criminal charges that risk sending him to prison for life, including attempting to kill a presidential candidate and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.

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(NEW YORK) — The Drug Enforcement Administration said that it arrested over 600 people during a weeklong operation targeting the Sinaloa drug cartel.

The arrests were “aimed at dismantling the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the world’s most violent and powerful drug cartels, responsible for flooding the United States with fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin,” according to the DEA.

In February, the Trump administration designated the Mexico-based Sinaloa cartel, along with seven other groups, as a foreign terrorist organization. The cartel remains one of the most significant threats to public safety, public health and national security in the U.S., according to the DEA’s statement on the arrests.

From Aug. 25 through Aug. 29, DEA agents across 23 domestic field divisions and seven foreign regions carried out coordinated enforcement actions that resulted in the arrests of 617 people, along with the seizure of 480 kilograms of fentanyl powder, 714,707 counterfeit pills, 2,209 kilograms of methamphetamine, 7,469 kilograms of cocaine, 420 firearms and currency and assets worth close to $13 million, the DEA said.

“These results demonstrate the full weight of DEA’s commitment to protecting the American people,” said DEA Administrator Terrance Cole. “Every kilogram of poison seized, every dollar stripped from the cartels, and every arrest we make represents lives saved and communities defended. DEA will not relent until the Sinaloa Cartel is dismantled from top to bottom.”

“There are tens of thousands of Sinaloa members, associates, and facilitators operating worldwide, in at least 40 countries who are responsible for the production, manufacturing, distribution, and operations related to trafficking dangerous and deadly synthetic drugs,” the DEA continued.

Brian M. Clark, special agent in charge of the Los Angeles Field Division, said that while the numbers reflect a one-week snapshot, the efforts to combat the cartel persist year-round.

“The Sinaloa Cartel’s reach is vast and unremitting. This ruthless cartel is intent on cashing in, permeating our communities with their poison, with no regard to human suffering. For that reason, DEA’s work remains critical and laser-focused. The success achieved during this operation is a direct result of the unwavering and exceptional work by the men and women of DEA,” said Clark.

ABC News’ Luke Barr contributed to this report.

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