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Man Accused Of Cutting Off Pregnant Wife's Arm May Have Wanted To Swim To Canada, Police Say
Police said Yong Lu was wearing a life jacket when he got caught and might have been planning to swim away.
A Brooklyn man wanted by police for allegedly severing his pregnant wife’s arm was arrested in Niagara Falls on Saturday in a life jacket, and police said he might have planned to swim to Canada.
Yong Lu, 35, allegedly attacked his wife Yang Li, 31, on Thursday afternoon in their apartment, the NYPD said. Lu used a meat cleaver and severed Li’s right arm at the bicep, along with two fingers from her left hand, police said.
“They seemed like normal husband and wife,” a neighbor, Ning Weing, 40, told the New York Post after the attack.
“I’ve never seen them fight,” Weing added. “They get along really well.”
Surgeons at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan were able to re-attach Li’s arm, the Post said.
Lu disappeared after the attack, but cops caught up with him in Niagara Falls on Saturday . At first, police said, Lu tried to stow away on a Canada-bound bus.
“He talked to a bus driver and asked to ride over to Canada in the luggage compartment," Deputy U.S. Marshal Brent Novak told the Buffalo News. But the bus driver refused, so Lu went to a Walmart and purchased a life jacket.
“We're assuming he was going to swim across" to Canada, Novak said.
Niagara Falls Police Superintendent Bryan DalPorto told the Niagara Gazette the NYPD alerted his department that Lu was in the city, catching a bite inside One Rainbow Center, the welcome center next to the Rainbow Bridge across the Niagara River from Canada.
Lu was apprehended by Niagara Falls police and the U.S. Marshals Violent Felony Task Force around 7:45 p.m, DalPorto said.
Photographs of his arrest published by the Niagara Falls Reporter depict Lu wearing flip-flops and chains as he is being taken into custody. Another photograph shows the yellow, black and grey life preserver Yu was wearing in the back of a police vehicle.
Lu was charged on Sunday in Brooklyn with first-degree assault. He said nothing as he was walked by police out of the precinct and transported to court for his arraignment. He was ordered held without bail at his arraignment on Monday.
[Photo: NYPD; The Niagara Falls Reporter/Samir Hamilton]
