A 51-year-old man stabbed two people in broad daylight in the vicinity of Central Park on the Upper West Side in Manhattan on Thursday afternoon before being taken into custody, the police said.

The assailant, identified as Raul Morales, attacked the two men in separate incidents on Central Park West and Amsterdam Avenue at around 1:30 p.m., leaving them wounded, the police said. Both were expected to survive.

Mr. Morales first walked up to a 57-year-old man on West 84th and Central Park West and stabbed him in the back with a knife, according to a spokesman for the Police Department. He then went to West 86th Street and Amsterdam, the spokesman said, where he approached another man, this time stabbing him in the torso with a screwdriver.

It was not immediately clear what led to the midday attack in the heart of the Upper West Side, a residential neighborhood with low crime rates. But on Thursday, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said that Mr. Morales had yelled “Allahu akbar” as he attacked both men, according to accounts from the victims and witnesses.

Ms. Tisch said that the department was evaluating whether the stabbings had been intended as hate crimes and that detectives were still investigating Mr. Morales’s motive. While Mr. Morales did not have a history of mental health issues documented with the department, she added, it appeared that his mental state might have played a role in the attacks.

The first victim was identified as a 57-year-old Asian man, Chok Sung, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter. The second victim was Moshe Yezhak Grunhaus, a 50-year-old Jewish man, the official said.