Attacker punches, stabs Times Square bakery worker in spat over chair: cops
The manager of a 24-hour Times Square bakery was stabbed Monday during a scuffle with a knife-wielding nut – all because of a chair, according to police.
Thomas Montice, 30, who has been busted before for brawling with other Big Apple retailers, got into it again after walking out of NY Bakery and Desserts on Broadway near West 47th Street around 9:15 p.m., cops said.
Police said Montice flew into a rage when the employee asked him to return the chair – and got into a drag-out fight on the sidewalk, police said.
“He was bothering people and trying to get our chair,” bakery owner Eyup Bayindir said Tuesday. “He was a problem. The manager did what he was supposed to do.
“He didn’t stab him to give him a little injury,” Bayindir said of Montice. “He basically stabbed him to death. What do you call that? Attempted murder. It was attempted murder.”
Police said Montice allegedly slugged the employee in the face and the two men wrestled on the ground – then the victim felt like he had been stabbed.
Seeing the blood, the employee ran back into the bakery and told Bayindir to call 911. He was rushed to the hospital and listed in stable condition, cops said.
Montice, of Harlem, was busted at the scene and charged with second- and third-degree assault and weapons possession, police said.
“It wasn’t even a fight or an argument,” Bayindir said. “He just warned him, ‘Can you please leave?’ And the guy pulled out a knife form his pocket and stabbed his neck.”
According to law enforcement sources, Montice has been something of a menace for merchants in the Big Apple.
On April 18, he was arrested for criminal mischief for allegedly smashing the front window of a West Harlem grocery store, the sources said.
One week earlier, he was charged with assault after cops said he jumped over the counter and bit the ear of an employee at another retailer in the neighborhood, according to the sources.
And as far back as 2014 police sources said Montice was arrested for allegedly slapping and strangling a worker at an Upper West Side business during a dispute over money.
Workers at the bakery Tuesday afternoon denied any knowledge of the most recent attack, saying they don’t know who works at night.
A worker at a perfume store, Arabian Oud, located next door to the bakery, called the attack “heartbreaking.”
“We all work here. That’s crazy,” the worker said. “There’s crazy people in New York.”
