Bystander trying to break up fight beaten with bag of lug nuts

A good Samaritan who tried to break up a fight in Washington Square Park became a victim himself when the one combatant walloped him with a bag filled with lug nuts, he said.

James Key, 41, had just finished visiting his father in a rehab facility Saturday evening and was walking through the Greenwich Village park when he came across the scuffle.

“As I came closer to the scene, it was obvious one person was clearly getting the better of the altercation and beating another man up very seriously with his fist,” Key said. “There were some women screaming, and they were obviously distraught, and I decided if could keep someone from getting hurt, maybe I should do that.”

The attacker — who cops identified as Roland Pacheco, 50 — repeatedly screamed “f—-t” at his victim, Key recalled.

“So I pulled [Pacheco] away from the other guy, pulled him by the shoulders…and then I stood between them so he couldn’t attack the guy anymore, and then I just asked him, ‘Why are you doing that? What did that guy do to you?’ His answer was to punch me in the face.”

Key immediately warned Pacheco that he was “going to jail today” and attempted to call 911 — but he attacker kept on swinging and punching. Suddenly — as dramatic video shows — Pacheco started swinging at him with an unusual weapon.

“He had…this big blue tarp and suddenly he started swinging at me,” Key said. “I put my left arm up to defend myself from the blows, [but] he hit my arm very hard….I thought it was rocks. I didn’t know it was steel.”

The beating rendered Key unable to call 911, so he yelled to the gathering crowd for help.

“I decided to try to disarm him to take the weapon away from him, trying to look for a good time between swings to try to grab it from him,” he said. “Eventually I was able to grab him by the head and neck, and then another bystander helped me wrestle him to the ground.”

Once the cops arrived, Key jumped backwards onto his back, so he wouldn’t appear to be the aggressor, he said.

“As the cops were about to restrain [Pacheco], he jumped up and punched my face two or three times while I was laying defenseless,” he said. “Another fight broke out between his son and someone else.”

Pacheco was arrested and charged with second-degree assault, cops said. He has eight prior arrests.

Key, an Upper West Side resident originally from Texas who works in marketing, was taken to Mount Sinai West for lacerations, bruises, bleeding and a black eye, he said. He even had a lug nut-shaped bruise on his arm.

Though he called his decision to intervene in the scuffle “stupid,” he said he was glad he did.

“[He] was a menace to society and I hope he gets the help he needs,” Key said.