The little girl, who was on a trip to New York with her mother, was hit in the head by an “emotionally disturbed” man on Monday in midtown Manhattan.
Elena Contreras Molerio, 36, from Miami, was walking down the street with her nine-year-old daughter near Central Park when she was punched in the left side of the head.
The suspect was quickly caught after a veteran doorman working at the nearby Plaza Hotel detained Raheem Ramsarran, 27, and managed to restrain him until police arrived.
The attack took place on a warm and sunny spring morning around 11:20 am at the corner of Central Park South and Grand Army Plaza.
This is the latest attack in a string of random attacks on New Yorkers, whether on the city’s subways or above ground.
The nine-year-old girl was attacked on Monday morning around 11:20 a.m. at the corner of Central Park South and Grand Army Plaza.
The doorman, Neil Johnson, 60, was working at the front door of the famed luxury hotel when he heard a noise and ran over to help the little girl and her mother. He said that the young man clutched his head and was clearly in pain.
“I saw a woman crying, and they run away from this guy, and he quickly walks towards them. So something must be done. I got between them and this crazy guy. And then another guy joined me, who, apparently, saw everything that was happening. So we just made sure this person couldn’t leave,” he told the New York Post.
Johnson, who has worked at the hotel for 24 years, said he had not seen anything like the incident he witnessed on Monday.
“There were always fights and stuff like that, but nothing that disturbing. It was just beyond common sense,” he said. “This little girl will never want to come to New York again.”
Ramsarran was caught within 15 minutes of the alleged attack and is now in police custody.
“We saw a man with a backpack, wearing a red hoodie and a beige jacket, who was yelling at people and people were literally running away from him and he was just yelling,” Kimberly Thomas, 24, told the Post moments after the attack.
I thought he was chasing someone. I didn’t know he hit anyone,” she added.
Although records of Ramsarran’s arrests do not exist, in 2018 and 2019 police were called to his Queens address over reports of a man with emotional disturbances.
In one case, he said that he was thinking about suicide, was not taking medication and wanted to go to the hospital.
“After he realized that he couldn’t go any further, we weren’t going to let him in, he stayed there and started yelling: ‘Where are the cops? Where are the cops? Johnson said.
Another nearby worker, Ahmed Ahmed, 41, who was driving a food cart and who was nearby when the attack occurred, said he thought the girl had been pushed.
“I saw this guy, he had a bag, and he ran into a little girl. [I saw him] push the girl to the ground and then run.
The outrageous attack, in which a man smeared feces across the face of a 43-year-old woman, was caught on camera last month.
Monday’s attack came after a string of high-profile random attacks.
These included the brutal hammering of a woman by a homeless man in Queens and the smearing of feces on another woman in the Bronx, after which the alleged perpetrator, a violent criminal with 44 arrests in history, was released without bail.
These incidents were in addition to the murder of Asian Christina Yuna Lee, 25, who was stalked to her apartment by another homeless man, Assamad Nash, 35, and stabbed to death in her own apartment.
A month earlier, 40-year-old Michelle Goh, who was waiting on the platform of the Times Square subway station, was killed when she was pushed onto the tracks.
The New York City subway has become the epicenter of a hidden crime wave after an alarming 73.3 percent increase in underground incidents, including 182 in February alone.
Hate crimes also doubled from last year, with attacks against Asians more than tripling and complaints against Jews up a whopping 54 percent year-over-year, from 134 to 207 incidents.
One recent poll found that nearly 75 percent of all New York City voters consider crime to be a “very serious” problem, the highest since the poll began in 1999.
One small ray of light for New York is that shootings are down slightly in February, down 1.3 percent from the same period in 2021.
“The men and women of the New York City Police Department are actively addressing the deep rooted causes of criminal behavior,” Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell said at the time.
“The NYPD will never back down, and the department has made too much progress in decades — and invested too much in the communities it serves — to back down by any measure. New Yorkers deserve better.”
Many of the latest violent crimes in New York City have been committed by repeat offenders after 48-year-old Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg downgraded many crimes to misdemeanors.
Last month, the mayor announced that the NYPD would send 1,000 additional officers and separate medical teams to the city’s subway system to stem the influx of underground crime.
Christina Yuna Lee, 35, was found dead last month after being stabbed in her apartment. Michelle Guo, 40, right, was on the Times Square subway platform when she was pushed onto the tracks.