A creep pushing a toddler in a stroller has been terrorizing women on Manhattan’s Upper East Side for months – body-checking them into walls and spitting in their faces in the violent, unprovoked attacks.
At least five women have been targeted in the tony neighborhood since June, and as recently as Saturday, by the brute, who remains on the lam.
They include Veronica Poloneitchik, who recalled being shoved to the ground on East 82nd Street and Second Avenue on June 26 – after admiring the man and young child on the street.
“As a woman, you always pay attention to babies. I was looking at the baby in the stroller and the guy that was pushing the stroller literally jumped and slammed me into the wall with his hip and shoulder,” she told The Post.
Poloneitchik, who’s lived on the Upper East Side for 13 years, said she yelled after the man and was met with a sinister and “dark smile.”
“I’ve never seen a smile like that, like when someone knows what they’re doing and loving it,” she recalled.
“There’s so much pleasure that you can see in his eyes from doing that, he’s going to do it again.”
Photos snapped by one of the victims and published by East Side Feed, which first reported the story, show the alleged assailant wearing a backwards cap, shorts, T-shirt and pushing a young boy in a black Bravo stroller.
He was described by cops Wednesday as being between 25 to 35 years old, about 5-foot-9, with a dark complexion and slim build.
His rap sheet includes 11 arrests, including one in December when he allegedly attacked a 68-year-old man while shopping at a store on 86th Street and Lexington Avenue, police sources said.
In that case, he was charged with felony assault and failure to exercise control of a minor, according to the sources.
Poloneitchik said she was able to flag down a cop car on 80th Street and Third Avenue, and police questioned the man – who feigned ignorance.
“He just looked at me and said, ‘Well, she was trying to attack my baby.’ I said, ‘Are you kidding? I’m a woman. I looked at your baby. I smiled. I would never attack your baby. Why would I do this?’
“He said, ‘No, she was getting too close. She was ready to attack my baby and she was ready to attack me. And I just had to [protect] my baby.’”
Police told the pair to go their “separate ways,” Poloneitchik recalled.
“You have that feeling of, wait, he did this to me — what is he doing to that baby?” she said.
“The baby has no way to complain. At least I can call someone.”
Three other women told The Post they were attacked by the same man in similar fashion on Aug. 14, Aug. 18 and on Friday, including Kelly Kreth, who said he spat in her eye as she walked her dog on East 85th Street and York Avenue.
“I got really scared because he was so close to my head that I thought he was going to hit me in the head,” Kreth said about the disturbing encounter on Aug. 14.
“So I turned around and he was walking slowly away, so I snapped his picture. I saw him spit at another woman and continued to walk down York going south.”
In each of the other two cases, the jerk was wheeling the stroller with the kid in it when he allegedly purposely knocked into a woman.
One of them, a 45-year-old mom who didn’t want to be identified, recalled that he “pushed me, like, pretty hard and knocked me off balance” in the Sept. 8 shove outside her son’s school on East 95th St. and Third Avenue.
“It was like completely on purpose. And I was shocked because he had a baby with him,” she said.
“I hope he’s not abusing the child but, in any case, he’s teaching his child to abuse other people. It’s just really disturbing on a lot of different levels,” she said.
“Third Avenue on the Upper East Side should not be considered an unsafe place to be.”
Waj – who asked to only go by her first name – was attacked on East 68th Street and Lexington Avenue while walking to a doctor’s appointment on Aug. 18.
Waj, who has a broken foot, said the man took a “sharp turn” toward her on the “wide” sidewalk and “trapped” her against the wall on her right side. He then “rams into me, into the [foot] that has a fracture in it.”
She flagged down cops at a nearby subway station but she said they let him go.
The victims told The Post that they believe more women have been attacked – though just one has filed a police report, cops said.
That was in the most recent attack, on Saturday, when a 64-year-old woman was shoved on East 77th Street near Third Avenue – so forcefully that she scraped her knees and tore her clothes.
“It’s scary. This is the first time this has happened,” the woman’s daughter-in-law said.
The victim, a grandmother who’s lived in New York for almost 50 years, obtained surveillance video that showed her alleged assaulter in a red cap – and pushing a stroller down the block.
Since then, the woman, who wished to remain anonymous, has been “afraid” and “hypervigilant” whenever she leaves home.
Her daughter-in-law, like other victims, expressed concern for the safety of the young boy in the stroller.
“Where’s CPS in this?” she wondered, referring to Child Protective Services.
“Are we waiting for this kid to die?”
Additional reporting by Joe Marino and Amanda Woods
