Police in New York City shot and killed a man who stabbed three people on a subway platform in New York City’s Grand Central station, the city’s police commissioner said.

Jessica Tisch, who leads the New York police department, told reporters at a news conference at the station that officers, flagged down by a witness to the stabbings at about 9.40am, had encountered a suspect, armed with a machete, who defied at least 20 verbal orders to drop the weapon and repeatedly stated “that he was Lucifer”.

The officers attempted to de-escalate, the commissioner said, telling the suspect “we are going to get you help”. When the suspect approached the officers with the weapon, one of them shot the man twice and began emergency medical aid.

The suspect, identified by Tisch as 44-year-old Anthony Griffin, was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital.

The suspect entered the New York subway system in Queens on Saturday morning, according to surveillance footage. His first victim, an 84-year-old man, was slashed on the head on the 7 train subway platform in the station at Grand Central at East 42nd Street and Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan.

The suspect then moved upstairs to the platform for the 4,5 and 6 subway lines, where he slashed a 65-year-old man and fractured his skull, and then slashed a third victim, a woman, in the shoulder.

All three victims were hospitalized in stable condition with injuries that “are not believed to be life-threatening”, the police commissioner said.

“The whole incident was captured on body-worn camera,” Tisch said.

New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, wrote on social media that he had been briefed on the incident.

The police posted a photograph of the weapon on social media.

The suspect had three prior arrests, but “no EDP history”, Tisch said, using the shorthand for the “emotionally disturbed person” reports filed by her department.

Multiple subway trains would bypass the station until further notice, the police said.