NEW YORK (AP) – Four stabbings within hours in Manhattan left two tourists from Canada wounded near a trendy hotel and a Texas visitor critically injured by a silent subway attacker. Police were questioning a suspect on Wednesday and trying to determine if the incidents were connected.

The latest happened about 4 a.m. Wednesday, when a man in the Times Square area stabbed the two Canadian women, ages 22 and 25. The women were hospitalized in stable condition.

Two security officers from the nearby W Hotel tended to the women and called 911 while two of its doormen followed the fleeing man to a fast-food restaurant, waited for police and identified the suspect, said hotel spokesman Jane Lehman.

A 25-year-old man was taken into custody for questioning. Detectives also were trying to learn if the man was involved in two earlier subway stabbings.

About an hour before the attack on the women, a 30-year-old man waiting with a friend on a midtown subway platform in Rockefeller Center was stabbed twice in the stomach, apparently during a robbery, police said. He was hospitalized in stable condition. The attacker fled.

And on Tuesday afternoon, Christopher McCarthy, 21, of Houston, was hospitalized in critical condition after he was stabbed by a man sitting across from him in a subway car on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, an attack police said was random and apparently unprovoked.

No words were exchanged between McCarthy and the man, who police said was in his 20s and wore all black. The man left the train and police launched an extensive search, scouring subway tunnels and nearby Central Park.

Police said McCarthy was riding with his girlfriend on the downtown train around 4 p.m. when he was stabbed. The pair had apparently gotten lost after heading in the wrong direction on the subway, and switched trains to travel back downtown.

At least four other people were on the train when McCarthy was stabbed, police said.

“Christopher is still critical, but they say he will make it,” his uncle, James McCarthy, told the Daily News.

The incident drew comparisons to the 1990 death of 22-year-old Brian Watkins, a Utah tourist who was stabbed to death in a Manhattan subway station while defending his mother during a robbery. Seven youths were convicted in the murder; all were sentenced to maximum terms of 25 years to life in prison.

Watkins’ parents later sued the city, arguing the transit agency failed to provide a safe subway and the city’s ambulance service responded too slowly. They agreed in 1998 to accept a $300,000 settlement of the $100 million wrongful death suit.