A shouting maniac hurled a bottle at a 67-year-old woman in a Midtown subway station Monday – as the victim railed over the attacker being loose despite a lengthy rap sheet.
Vandell Williams, 30, — who has nearly a dozen prior busts and multiple documented mental health incidents — attacked Milena Ruiz for no apparent reason on the stairs headed to the 5 train at the Grand Central-42nd Street, sources and the victim said.
Williams has 11 prior arrests — at least two of them related to crimes at the very same subway station, police said. He also has an extensive history as an “emotionally disturbed person,” with 13 such incidents on his record, according to sources.
“I don’t understand how people like that, they keep releasing them,” Ruiz said Tuesday.
The troubling incident unfolded around 4 p.m. while Ruiz was with her home care attendant and speaking in Spanish — and the victim wonders if the language is what set off the attacker, she said.
“I didn’t meet that guy ever in my life before,” she said. “I don’t say nothing to him. I was walking, talking in Spanish.”
Ruiz said she never saw the bottle coming.
“The lady who take care of me, we held each other because I didn’t want to fall,” she said. “We heard a sound like [a] pop. But it was on my head where the bottle hit me. A few guys start yelling at him to stop, because he started like walking very fast, trying to get out of the station.
“I followed him because I saw lot of police before….everything happened, and I started yelling, ‘Police, police! Please help me! He hit me!’ And then I saw two police. They held him.”
Williams started “yelling a lot of things” at Ruiz, but she did not pay attention as she clasped her head in pain.
“And then more police start coming,” Ruiz recalled. “They told me that I was going to be safe and don’t worry [about] him. They took him and they took me too to like a little police station that they have there in Grand Central Station.”
Williams was arrested at the scene and charged with two counts of second-degree assault – one related to an attack on a senior citizen – as well as criminal possession of a weapon and harassment, police said.
The victim was taken to NYU Langone Health, where she was listed in stable condition, cops said.
“The hospital told me that I had a concussion, and inflammation in my head where he hit me,” Ruiz said. “I’m supposed to go back to see if there’s somebody to help me with what he did to me in my head. I’ve been shaking, nervous. I can’t always sleep. I am not feeling well. I really don’t feel well.”
Ruiz had no choice but to take the train back home when she was released from the hospital around 1 a.m., she said — but now she’s scared of resuming her almost-daily commute with her caretaker.
“Now, I told her this morning, I am afraid to walk outside,” she said.
Williams’ lengthy rap sheet since April 2015 includes arrests for assault, forcible touching, grand larceny, petit larceny, public lewdness, forcible touching, drug-related offenses and theft of service, authorities said.
On Aug. 26, 2020, he allegedly kicked a 25-year-old woman in the knee when she refused to give him any money as she walked through a passageway between train lines, police said. He was charged with third-degree assault, cops said.
On March 25, 2021, he allegedly groped a 30-year-old woman riding an escalator in the station — pressing his private area against her buttocks and touching her without permission, cops said. He was charged with forcible touching, according to police.
He was also arrested for allegedly stealing a cell phone from a 56-year-old man on board a northbound No. 4 train at the 149th Street-Grand Concourse station on March 25, 2020 — facing charges of grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, cops said.
The dispositions of those cases were not immediately known.
His arraignment in connection to the latest attack was pending Tuesday evening.
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