Suspect in Ashmont T stabbing apprehended in Jamaica Plain

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

A homeless man who allegedly stabbed a 21-year-old Brockton woman in the chest Tuesday morning inside the Ashmont Red Line station was arrested Wednesday at a Jamaica Plain shelter, MBTA Transit Police said.

Donald Calvaire, 29, was arrested Wednesday afternoon without incident at the Shattuck Shelter, Transit Police Superintendent-in-Chief Joseph O’Connor said. Calvaire is scheduled to be arraigned on charges stemming from the incident Thursday morning in Dorchester District Court.

O’Connor said Transit Police detectives expected to find Calvaire at an area shelter and were tipped off to his whereabouts by the community. He declined to elaborate.

He said authorities are still investigating a possible motive for the attack, and that Calvaire and the victim, who has been released from Boston Medical Center, do not know each other.

O’Connor said Tuesday that the assailant approached the woman from behind inside the station, and that he had been acting erratically on a Brockton Area Transit Authority bus that he and the victim rode into the station.

The woman was about 4 or 5 feet inside the south ­entrance of the station shortly after 9 a.m. when Calvaire allegedly stabbed her in the ­upper right shoulder and chest area, officials said.

O’Connor said Wednesday that while the woman reported being stabbed with a knife, investigators are still trying to determine what type of weapon was used.

Blood stains were visible inside the lobby of the station on Tuesday near the ticket kiosk, which was manned at the time of the stabbing, and another 30 to 40 feet away in the pavement outside the station.

Some 15,000 people use the Ashmont station on a daily basis, and O’Connor said Tuesday that stabbings there highly unusual.