NEW YORK (AP) - A shirtless man wielding a homemade spear sliced a 15-year-old boy in the forehead Friday in a brazen attack in New York City’s Times Square, police said.
Roland Pacheco, 52, is undergoing a psychiatric evaluation while awaiting arraignment in a Manhattan court on assault, weapon possession and menacing charges.
Pacheco fled after attacking the boy, who was hospitalized and treated with stitches, only to be caught slashing tires a few blocks away, police said.
Officers used a stun gun to subdue Pacheco after he started swinging the weapon - a pocket knife attached to a broomstick - at them, police said.
An email seeking comment was sent to Pacheco’s lawyer in another case.
Pacheco’s arrest history includes a 2018 incident in which he allegedly pummeled a man with a tarp full of lug nuts in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park.
That case has yet to be resolved.
The Times Square assault happened a day after two women and a man were cut up during an unrelated scuffle front of the city’s landmark main library, two blocks away.
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