Thanks for contacting us. We've received your submission.
An unhinged man with a history of attacking strangers randomly slugged a 4-year-old boy in the head in Times Square — then promptly got lit up like the lights on Broadway by two women, with the child’s mother also stepping in to help restrain him until officers arrived, law enforcement sources and prosecutors said.
Babacar Mbaye, 34, was arrested Thursday after the unprovoked broad-daylight attack at 46th Street and Seventh Avenue at the Crossroads of the World, the NYPD said.
The brute allegedly hit the child at around 3:20 p.m. as the area bustled with pedestrians enjoying an unseasonably warm afternoon.
He was then tackled by the child’s mom and another woman, according to the NYPD, law enforcement and security footage obtained by The Post.
The video showed the two heroic women racing in front of the TKTS bleachers to take down the creep. One of them tackled the suspect just inches away from Seventh Avenue traffic while the other swung an object that appeared to be a bottle or rolled-up umbrella at him, according to the footage.
The young boy could be seen holding his head with both hands.
One woman who held down the suspect was the child’s mother, sources said, but it was unclear which one.
“Who needs DA Bragg? The mother took care of justice the old fashioned way,” said a Manhattan cop, referring to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
When police showed up to arrest Mbaye, he allegedly kicked one of the officers in the leg as they took him into custody, prosecutors said at his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court late Friday night.
“I drank a whole bottle of hand sanitizer. I shouldn’t have done this,” the suspect told police while in custody at Bellevue Hospital, according to prosecutors.
The child was treated at the scene. He and his mom appear to live in The Bronx.
Mbaye — who was on supervised release in connection with other recent random attacks — was charged with felony assault, reckless endangerment and resisting arrest, according to police and prosecutors.
He has three open misdemeanors for “assaulting strangers” dating back to the summer, including two in the past month, one where he allegedly “pushed a stranger and punched her twice in the shoulder” and the other where he “punched a stranger in the head,” prosecutors said.
Sources said the suspect has a record dating back to 2009, with arrests including for assault, criminal possession of a weapon, DWI and menacing. He has 16 prior misdemeanor convictions, according to prosecutors.
Mbaye did not speak in court during the hearing, where Judge Jay Weiner ordered him held on $30,000 cash bail. Prosecutors from Bragg’s office had asked the judge to set bail at $50,000.
Mbaye’s defense attorney, Thomas Kenniff, said his client was unemployed and lived with mother and two siblings, while claiming there was “never any intent for him to strike the child.”
The lawyer said Mbaye was “under the influence of an intoxicated, debilitating psychiatric episode.”
“He was dancing in the midst of Times Square and inadvertently made contact with the child … which drew the ire of the child’s mother who maybe perhaps reasonably believed that he intended to strike the child,” Kenniff argued. “But I’m confident that was not his intention.”
Mbaye’s next court date is Wednesday.