Th child’s mother, Rafaela Rivera, told ABC7 that she and her two children were enjoying the weather in Times Square on Thursday when she noticed a man walking towards them.
“I heard a smack like somebody got hit in the head with a bottle,” she told the station on Sunday. “I turn around and the baby is screaming hollering and crying.”
A spokesperson for the New York Police Department told Newsweek that 34-year-old Babacar Mbaye was suspected of striking Rivera’s son, Angel Rivera, with “a closed fist causing pain, bruises and redness.”
Footage published by the New York Post shows Rivera chase after a man who appears to have struck her son.
It captured the moment the boy’s mother and another woman raced in front of the TKTS bleachers, with one tackling the suspect and other swinging an object at him.
“I was grabbing toward him and said ‘hey you just hit my son,’” Rivera told ABC7. “I grabbed him harder and we both went down. He was on top of me and I was not letting go.”
Officers arrived on the scene and arrested Mbaye. He has been charged with felony assault, acting in a manner injurious to a child, assault on a police officer, obstructing governmental administration, and resisting arrest.
Mybaye “fought officers while they were trying to place him under arrest” and kicked an officer’s leg, the police spokesperson told Newsweek.
Prosecutors said Mbaye told police while in custody at Bellevue Hospital that he had drunk a whole bottle of hand sanitizer. “I shouldn’t have done this,” he said, according to the Post.
He didn’t speak at the arraignment, but defense attorney, Thomas Kenniff, argued his client was “under the influence of an intoxicated, debilitating psychiatric episode” and never intended to harm the child.
“He was dancing in the midst of Times Square and inadvertently made contact with the child… which drew the ire of the child’s mother who maybe perhaps reasonably believed that he intended to strike the child,” Kenniff said, according to the Post. “But I’m confident that was not his intention.”
Mbaye “has been suffering from severe mental illness most of his adult life,” Kenniff told Newsweek.
“He has repeatedly acted on suicidal ideations by ingesting household detergents. Unfortunately, he has been repeatedly churned through our criminal justice and hospital systems without the intervention necessary for someone with his degree of disturbance. I am hopeful that out of this troubling incident will come an opportunity to get Mr. Mbaye the help he so desperately needs.”
At the time of Thursday’s incident, Mbaye had been on supervised release in connection with random attacks on strangers, including two from the past month, according to the Post.
He is accused of pushing a woman and punching her twice in the shoulder in one incident and punching a stranger in the head in another.
Online records show Mbaye is being held on $30,000 bail. His next court date is on February 23.
Rafaela Rivera could not immediately be reached for further comment.
If you have thoughts of suicide, confidential help is available for free at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Call 1-800-273-8255. The line is available 24 hours every day.
Update 2/21/22, 4:01 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information and comments from the New York Police Department and Thomas Kenniff.
