Denver Police Thursday arrested a 29-year-old man investigators suspect is responsible for two stabbing deaths, including an elderly woman, within blocks of each other Friday.

The first stabbing happened at 5:10 a.m. Thursday. Denver police said it was reported on an RTD bus at West 32nd Avenue and Federal Boulevard. The victim was taken to a nearby hospital where they were pronounced dead. An RTD spokesperson told The Denver Gazette the stabbing occurred on bus route 31, which runs up and down Federal Boulevard, but referred all other questions to Denver police regarding the incident.

The second stabbing happened about four hours later at West 50th Avenue and Federal Boulevard, according to an official Denver Police Department post on social media platform X. The incident near Regis University prompted a lock-down order from school officials, that was lifted hours later.

Regis University said in an X post that the suspect was arrested at W. 55th Avenue and Lowell Boulevard.

Vinchenzo Moscoso, 29, was arrested and faces two counts of first-degree murder, according to a Denver Police news release. He’s being held in the Denver County Detention Center and scheduled to appear in court Friday.

The Denver Office of the Medical Examiner will release the victim’s name, police said, pending an autopsy and family notification.

Surveillance video showed a man get on the RTD bus at West 32nd Avenue and Federal Boulevard around 5 a.m. Thursday. The suspect allegedly started stabbing a male victim in the back of the bus in the neck “immediately, without provocation or warning,” according to an arrest affidavit. Witnesses called 911 and labeled the suspect as a Hispanic man. Court records show he’s White.

The suspect left the back of the bus after it had stopped.

Police were alerted of the next stabbing around 10:30 a.m. Thursday on West 50th Avenue, just two miles north of the previous stabbing. An estimated 60-year-old woman was unresponsive and bleeding from the neck.

Moscoso was found nearby and was said to fit the suspect description, according to the affidavit. He allegedly had blood on his hands and officers found a bloody knife in his pocket.

The victim — an elderly woman — was found dead on the scene due to stabs to the neck. A witness claimed Moscoso had been standing near the body.

Moscoso was arrested in the 5500 block of North Lowell Boulevard without incident and had a bus ticket with the bus number of the first stabbing on it, according to the arrest affidavit.

The motives for these homicides remain under investigation.

Moscoso has a lengthy criminal record, with at least 14 cases filed against him since 2012, according to court records. He was sentenced to four years in the Department of Corrections in 2019 after he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of aggravated robbery. The case originally contained 12 charges including theft, tampering with evidence, menacing with a weapon, six counts of robbery and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Eleven charges were dropped.

In September of 2022, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of criminal mischief and was sentenced to two years probation and 60 days in jail, court records show. He pleaded guilty earlier in 2022 to DUI and was sentenced to a year in jail and two years probation, but the sentence was suspended. It’s not clear why that suspended sentence did not kick in with the later guilty plea in the 2022 criminal mischief case.

Denver Gazette reporter Sage Kelley and City Editor Dennis Huspeni contributed to this report.