A man accused of injuring an 8-year-old boy during a tussle with a security guard after a woman he was chasing — while wielding a hammer — fled onto the campus of a Queens Jewish school has a criminal record that includes more than 50 arrests in New York City, cops said Wednesday.
Shaleek Brunson, 42, was charged Wednesday with assault, menacing, harassment and trespassing for the bizarre attack, in which he shoved a student at the Jewish Institute of Queens into a fence after the woman he was chasing sought refuge there Tuesday.
Brunson has been arrested 56 times since 2000, with multiple busts for grand larceny and assault, in addition to drug and weapons charges, cops said. A law enforcement source described him as a larceny recidivist and a robbery recidivist.
He currently has six cases working their way through city courts, including one for a July 24 arrest after he was allegedly caught palming about $1,300 in merchandise from a Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan, records show.
The suspect was chasing a college-age woman with a hammer when she darted into the front yard of the Jewish school and security there rushed to her aid, according to Councilman Phil Wong, whose district includes the Jewish Institute of Queens.
The suspect was fleeing security at the school on Woodhaven Blvd. near Wetherole St. when he knocked the student into the fence, cutting his face, Wong and sources said.
The guards managed to disarm the suspect, taking his hammer, and officers with the 112th Precinct placed him under arrest.
Brunson was hospitalized following his arrest. His arraignment was pending Wednesday.
The attack came just days after a man shouting “Allahu Akbar” stabbed an Asian man and a Jewish man in back-to-back broad-daylight attacks on the Upper West Side. The assailant, Raul Morales, is facing up to 40 years in prison for his violent hate crime spree, prosecutors said Saturday.