A stroller-pushing maniac who shoved and spit on strangers in a series of attacks in Manhattan took a plea deal on Monday — and now faces five years behind bars.
Sam Mensah, 33, pleaded guilty to assault charges in Manhattan Supreme Court just as he was set to face trial this week for assaulting at least five women on the Upper East Side in 2023, prosecutors said.
Mensah, who had racked up nearly a dozen prior arrests, became a neighborhood staple for months due to his violent, unprovoked attacks — with surveillance images catching him pushing a young boy in a black Bravo stroller during the assaults.
He was finally nabbed in September 2023 for shoving a 64-year-old grandmother so forcefully that she scraped her knees and tore hear clothes near East 77th Street and Third Avenue.
His attorney, Raymond Loving, was shocked by Mensah’s decision to plead guilty. Loving who described Mensah as an overprotective dad, saying that he planned to argue his client felt threatened by one of his victim’s — a 68-year-old attorney who he knocked out cold in one of the attacks.
“We were going to argue that he acted in self-defense of his son because the [68-year-old] man got very close to the baby stroller where his son was and he had a reasonable belief the guy was going to somehow endanger his son,” Loving said.
Mensah was also accused of hitting someone in the face with a handbasket in a grocery store and smacking a 16-year-old girl.
In a separate attack, he spit in a reporter’s eye as she walked her dog on East 85th Street and York Avenue, according to prosectors.
Judge Felicia Mennin ordered Mensah to be remanded until his sentencing on Sept. 5.
