Cell phone video caught the bizarre and disturbing moment when a man beat bicyclist with a baseball bat in broad daylight in New York City.
The video, which shows the distressing incident clearly, begins with the man on the bike already down on the ground, trying to fend off the attack with one arm while ducking behind a parked car. The assailant, a black man, repeatedly hits his victim around the head and shoulders with a bat for several long moments, stopping only after a third man ran up and intervened. Other passersby can be seen standing around and watching the scene without making a move to help.
No more police, no more problems. Welcome to De Blasio’s New York City. pic.twitter.com/8VKfnRjMRd
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) February 19, 2021
According to the New York Post, the incident occurred around 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday on Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn.
The man wielding the bat was later identified as 46-year-old Ashanti Robinson, who’s already got more than a dozen criminal charges to his name including one for criminal possession of a weapon. Police say they’re still trying to figure out why Robinson attacked the man with the bat, but that the two were strangers.
Related: WATCH: Mob of Cyclists Viciously Attacks a Couple In Their SUV In Broad Daylight In NYC
The victim, who wasn’t named, was taken to a local hospital in critical but stable condition with cuts and swelling to the head.
The attack is merely the latest in a string of violent and deadly attacks that have been caught on camera in broad daylight across New York City. In December, a mob of cyclists were caught on video assaulting a middle-aged couple sitting in their SUV at a stoplight. Last summer, a man was shot dead one sunny afternoon while walking across an intersection holding his 6-year-old daughter’s hand.
Earlier this month, a 71-year-old woman said a man simply walked up to her while she was sitting on the subway and punched her in the face. Another woman, 68, says she was likewise hit in the back of the head by a random assailant while on the subway.
While left-wing activists and Democrats like Mayor Bill de Blasio were busy making a massive $1 billion cut to the NYPD budget amid nationwide accusations of racism by cops, the Big Apple ended 2020 by marking the bloodiest year in nearly a decade with 447 killings, a 41 percent jump over 2019 and the highest homicide count since 2011.