The lowlife charged with bludgeoning a city health worker with a hammer previously spent nearly two decades in prison — and was involved in a jailbreak that killed a guard, according to sources and reports.
Big Apple law-enforcement sources told The Post they were surprised to learn hammer suspect William Blount had a 20-year gap on his rap sheet — with his last bust dating back to 1993 — when he was nabbed in the heinous Queens assault last week.
Then they learned it was because the now-57-year-old was doing hard time in South Carolina on armed-robbery and kidnapping charges, sources said.
Blount was busted in 2000 in the case after he and his brother burst into a Bojangles restaurant, kidnapping two workers while armed and forcing them to open a safe, NBC New York reported.
Blount and two others later tried to escape the Richland County Jail in Columbia, SC, that same year — leaving jail guard Alvin Glenn, 59, strangled and the trio futilely leaping from the prison roof.
Blount, who was 36 at the time, broke both ankles during the attempted escape, according to NBC.
He was recaptured and ended up pleading guilty in the kidnapping and robbery case, as well as to a conspiracy-to-escape charge for the attempted jailbreak, and was given concurrent 20- and 15-year sentences behind bars.
Court records show Blount wasn’t prosecuted for Glenn’s death.
Law-enforcement sources said Blount ended up serving 18 years of his sentence.
He was freed in November 2018 to serve the last two years of his sentence on supervised release, according to the South Carolina Department of Corrections.
Police in South Carolina did not return messages about Blount’s criminal record.
Blount is now facing charges of attempted murder, robbery and assault for the brutal attack in Queens on Thursday evening that critically wounded Nina Rothschild, a 57-year-old scientist with the New York City Health Department.
Rothschild was headed home from her job when she was attacked at around 11:20 p.m. at the Queens Plaza E, M and R station.
Blount, whose last known address is in Astoria, Queens, has a half-dozen prior New York arrests — including on charges of robbery and criminal possession of a controlled substance, sources said.
Records show he served time in the late 1980s for attempted criminal sale of a controlled substance.
Footage from Thursday night’s attack shows Rothschild’s attacker creeping up behind her on the stairs and kicking her in what seemed like an attempt to make her fall. He then hit the scientist several times in the head, fracturing her skull, and ran off with her pocketbook, cops said.
With Post Wires
