A Bronx man has been linked to eight random punching attacks against women in lower Manhattan, including one that was the subject of a TikTok video, police said Tuesday.
Daquan Armstead, 31, was arrested for the violent spree of unprovoked attacks, which began on Feb. 12 and continued until last week, police said.
He’s facing multiple counts of assault as a hate crime and aggravated harassment for targeting women during his tirade of terror in Greenwich Village, Tribeca, the Lower East Side and the Bowery.
Armstead is responsible for nearly 15% of similar attacks that have occurred in Manhattan below 42nd St. over the last month, cops said.
He is suspected of attacking comedian Sarah Suzuki Harvard on Delancey St. near Essex St. March 19, punching her in the back of the head as she walked home before hosting a show.
“I was thinking about the show, in my own headspace — bam, all of a sudden I was hit in the back of my head,” Harvard, 30, told the Daily News last month.
The women he attacked range in age from 24 to 44, cops said. Another one of his victims was a 27-year-old NYU administrator who he allegedly punched in the head as she walked along Washington Square North near Fifth Ave. in Greenwich Village at around 10:30 a.m. on April 17.
An NYU memo about the incident said the attack on the administrator was being investigated as a hate crime and “might be tied to reports of a series of similar unprovoked attacks on women.”
Fifty people, mostly women, have been victims of random assaults below 42nd St. from mid-March to mid-April, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said last week.
For the week ending April 14, 10 women were victimized in the area, where most of the attacks reported by TikTok users have occurred, police said.
Armstead lives in the Williamsbridge section of the Bronx — about 20 miles from where he attacked his victims, cops said.
He never said anything to his victims, save one. On April 2 at the corner of Seventh Ave. and Charles St., he asked a 38-year-old woman walking by for a dollar. When the woman said she didn’t have any cash on her, he punched her in the back of the head and ran off, police said.
His victim was able to get a photo of the suspect before he ran off. That photo helped cops identify Armstead and link him to other cases, police said.
Investigators also tied him to other assaults along Delancey St., as well as Chrystie and Rivington Sts., and Elizabeth St., cops said.
None of the victims were seriously harmed, cops said.
Two men were charged last month in separate attacks that were the subject of TikTok videos in which the victims described being punched by strangers.
On March 27, cops arrested political gadfly Skiboky Stora, who they say assaulted TikTok influencer Halley Kate Mcgookin near W. 16th St. and Seventh Ave. in Chelsea at 10:20 a.m. two days earlier.
Armstead’s arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court was pending Tuesday.
