A homeless man attacked a 6-year-old child in New York and hit him on the head with a laptop

The mother of a 6-year-old boy who was hit on the head with a laptop by a homeless man Manhattan street, says a recently arrested suspect needs psychiatric help, reports New York Daily News.

Sarah Bonaccorsi, 25, was walking with her son near 114th Street and Manhattan Avenue, near Morningside Park. There, a stranger attacked her son, Dominic Bonaccorsi-Alvarez, without warning around 14:30 pm on 27 March.

"We didn't even notice he was coming," Bonaccorsi told the Daily News. “He came up from behind and quite unprovokedly hit my son in the head with a laptop.”

The police happened to be nearby and arrested Michael Johnson, 60, before he could harm anyone else.

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“Little kill..doc. I hit him over the head and he can't prove shit!" Johnson told an NYPD sergeant immediately after his arrest, according to the criminal complaint.

The boy's mother will meet with a prosecutor on Thursday, March 31, to discuss the incident, but said the last place Johnson should be is jail.

“I don't believe in the criminalization of mental health, so I hope that this person is sentenced to a psychiatric hospital where he can be treated,” Bonaccorsi said. “Instead of just being thrown into prison where, as a mentally ill person, he is likely to face abuse.”

Dominic, who at first thought he was hit by a tree branch, was not badly hurt. He was treated at St. Luke's for a bruise on the back of his head, but no concussion.

He's been largely silent since then, said his mom, who decided to leave the first grader at home on Monday while he recovers.

Bonaccorsi is a student at Columbia University studying human evolutionary biology. She has long been a safety concern, given the 2019 stabbing deaths of student Tessa Majors in Morningside Park and teaching assistant Davide Geary last December near Columbus Avenue and 110th Street.

On Sunday, March 27, Bonaccorsi and her boyfriend, Matias Alvarez, also a Columbia student universityleft their Manhattan apartment with their son with the idea of ​​enjoying the weather in the park.

It was then that Bonaccorsi's maternal instinct appeared.

“[The attacker] was still holding the laptop as if he wanted to hit someone else,” Bonaccorsi said. “So I kind of blamed him, and the police were right across the street, so within a 20-foot radius, he was arrested.”

Johnson, who is charged with a felony and endangering a child's welfare, has about 60 arrests since 1986 and has served three terms in a state prison, police said.

Johnson wore a dirty blue tracksuit and held up his pants during his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday, March 28. He muttered denials to his lawyer that he had no criminal record, although his case file shows otherwise.

Judge Robert McDonald ordered him to be held on $25 cash bail, or $000.

On December 6, he was arrested after being filmed scraping a swastika from the window of a Port Authority bus terminal and stealing five COVID-19 tests from Duane Reid inside the terminal, according to the criminal complaint.

He was charged with aggravated harassment, criminal hate speech, petty theft and possession of stolen property. The charges are not subject to bail, so Judge Martinez Alonso released him. He missed court on January 5 and, according to prosecutors, was put on a wanted list under an arrest warrant.

Released on parole in September 2016 after three years in prison for burglary, records show. He had previously served four years for a felony and was released on parole in November 2007. And before that, he served four years on another charge of burglary.

Bonaccorsi said that more funding is needed to fight the mentally ill and it is clear that insufficient attention to this issue will contribute to an increase in crime.