Police in New York City say they arrested a guy on Tuesday who they say attacked random women.
Police say that Daquan Armstead, 31, of the East Bronx, was arrested on suspicion of attacking seven women in Lower Manhattan out of hate between the end of March and the middle of April.
A police report says he hit women, sometimes in the face, on the heads, or on the backs.
Armstead said, “They spit at me” when asked about the claims as he was being led out of the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force office. The suspect said that the victims had spit on him, but the police didn’t believe him.
On Tuesday night, it wasn’t clear if he had hired a lawyer. New York County Defender Services, which helps people who are being accused of crimes find lawyers, said that there was no public record of his arrest.
The NYPD’s Office of the Deputy Commissioner for Public Information says Armstead was arrested on charges of aggravated harassment, attempted hate crime, and hate crime/assault.
As of now, police told NBC New York that there have been 95 random attacks in Manhattan this year, with 50 of the victims being women.
At least one person has been arrested in connection with a string of attacks that got a lot of attention after some of the women who were attacked told their stories on TikTok.
The claims against Armstead don’t seem to be any of the threats seen on social media.
The department put out a list of claimed attacks in order:
The NYPD said that around 8 p.m. on March 24, they got a report of a 30-year-old woman being hit in the face on the Lower East Side. It said that she rejected medical help even though the hit was hard enough to make her dizzy.
The next day, just after 10 a.m., police were called a few blocks to the northwest because a 36-year-old woman had been hit in the back, according to the NYPD. She also rejected medical care.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) said that just after 8 a.m. on April 2, “an unknown individual” hit a 38-year-old woman on the back of the head in Greenwich Village. She also refused to get medical help, the report said.
An NYPD report says that around 12:25 p.m. on April 5, someone hit a 25-year-old woman on the right side of her face on the Lower East Side. Police were called. It said she refused to get help.
A few blocks away and a few minutes later, police were called to the Lower East Side because someone had hit a 44-year-old woman on the right side of her face, the police department said. She also refused to get help.
Around 9:45 a.m. The NYPD said that on April 8, they were called to the Lower East Side to help a woman who had been hit on the back of the head. It said she refused to get medical help.
A 27-year-old woman was hit in the head by a “unknown individual” in Lower Manhattan just after 10:30 a.m. on April 17, according to the police department. It said she refused to get medical help.
