The young woman arrested for critically injuring an 85-year-old stranger with an unprovoked shove near Manhattan’s Union Square Park was a menace to her neighbors — who filed a half dozen harassment complaints with the NYPD before she was ultimately evicted, the Daily News has learned.
Paris Valentine, 29, was arrested at least three times during the string of clashes with residents inside her Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, building before she was forced out for not paying rent, according to police sources and court documents.
The three arrests were ultimately dismissed and sealed, the sources said.
The most recent arrest was on March 9, 2025, when she was accused of confronting a 28-year-old male neighbor in the building on Hart St. near Marcy Ave. with a Taser in her hand. She turned the Taser on during the confrontation, making her neighbor uneasy, police sources said.
The other arrests, from 2023, involved her allegedly striking a different neighbor in the building with a cane and then violating an order of protection barring her from being near that neighbor, police sources said.
Six harassment complaints were filed with the NYPD against Valentine for yelling at neighbors in the building, police sources said. Cops didn’t take action in those cases because they didn’t witness the harassment.
On Monday, Valentine allegedly shoved from behind without warning an 85-year-old woman who had just stepped off an MTA bus at Union Square Park about 12:30 p.m.
The victim lives near the park and is an active member of the Yiddish Philharmonic Chorus who loves attending Broadway shows, the opera and ballet. Now she is in a medically induced coma at Bellevue Hospital after fracturing her skull on the sidewalk in the fall and may never recover.
“It’s just so heartbreaking,” the victim’s 68-year-old daughter said. “She is an incredible woman who loved the city and this is what the city gave back to her.”
Valentine was arrested for assault and ordered held without bail during her arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court. She pleaded not guilty.
Her lawyer, Rosa Isabel Valiente, told the judge Valentine is a hard-working student from a good family who “feels really terrible” about the attack, which occurred while the suspect was walking her dog in the park while carrying a textbook. Prosecutors say she never said a word or looked back after the shove.
The lawyer requested unspecified medical attention for Valentine but did not mention mental illness.
Valentine’s former neighbors said this week they were victims of near-daily harassment from Valentine
“It was just insane,” said one neighbor, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “She would harass us every day.”
The neighbor, who lived across the hall from Valentine, said the suspect routinely taunted her from inside her apartment, uttering her insults through the microphone of a doorbell camera.
“She has a Ring camera and she would talk to us as we’re leaving our apartment,” said the neighbor. “She would just insult us, like call us like ugly, fat, broke.”
A building worker saw a different side of Valentine.
“She was wonderful with me. With the other tenants she was a menace,” the 45-year-old building worker said. “There’s nothing negative I can say about her. I’m telling you what other people told me and what I’ve seen on the cameras.”
“She was evil to everybody in the building,” he added. “There was a petition in the building trying to get her out and everybody said yes. (Only) one person said no. I was shocked. There’s 65 units.”
When she was evicted, she left her unit a disaster, the worker said.
“We had to redo the floor, the walls, the bathroom. New stove, everything was broken,” he said. “That’s how bad it was. The apartment was roach infested.”
A second neighbor, 43, said he and his partner had to move to a different floor from Valentine to avoid her bizarre tirades.
“Just incredibly vulgar and crude, extremely inappropriate things,” said the neighbor, who wished not to be named. “She would start screaming at 1 a.m. through the night.”
The torment for the tenants finally ended last year, when Valentine was evicted on Dec. 19 after living there several years. Housing court documents show that she at one point owed more than $83,000 in back rent.
Valentine is now back living with her mother, her lawyer said during the suspect’s arraignment for the Union Square attack.
Another neighbor said he routinely filed 311 noise complaints on Valentine and once requested a mental health check for her, which resulted in her being briefly hospitalized.
City 311 data shows that 26 noise complaints were filed in the Hart St. building between January 2024 and April 1, 2025. It wasn’t clear, however, if the complaints were about Valentine.
Shutterstock
The victim was near her home when the suspect, Paris Valentine, allegedly shoved her from behind near Union Square Park East and E. 16th St., police sources said. (Shutterstock)
Valentine’s lawyer declined to comment on the suspect’s prior arrests when reached Wednesday about the complaints made by Valentine’s neighbors.
“I hope they get help,” the victim’s daughter said of the suspect. “Or get incarcerated. This should not happen to another person.”