Homeless ‘lunatic’ shoves New Yorker, 76, after threatening others with ice pick: cops
An ice pick-wielding homeless “lunatic” with a criminal history shoved an elderly man to the ground in Midtown Tuesday morning after threatening other people, police and the victim said.
Victim Robert Gula, 76, said he was attacked near his office around 10:20 a.m. even as he attempted to avoid the unhinged brute, identified by police as Brian Wilbur, who had just pushed another woman moments earlier.
“So there’s this lunatic screaming on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 38th Street,” Gula told The Post.
“And I said, ‘Oh yeah, I better stay away from him,’ and everybody’s looking at him. And he goes up to a woman and he says, ‘F–king b–h. He pushes her. I said, ‘Oh my God.'”
Gula walked over to Broadway to mail some letters and thought he was in the clear when the suspect launched at him.
“All of a sudden I hear this screaming, and he pushes me, and I fell right down on the road,” he recalled. “I’ve got bruises on my knees and my elbows.”
Wilbur, 36, was arrested near the scene and charged with second-degree assault, authorities said.
He’s previously been arrested four times, including for second-degree assault in October 2021, cops said. Other past charges include criminal mischief, hate crime menacing with a weapon and jumping a turnstile, according to police.
Though Gula was fortunately not stabbed, he thought of the knife-wielding homeless man who fatally stabbed three innocent victims in Manhattan on Monday after he was pushed.
“But I was thinking of the knife thing the day before,” he said. “And, oh, it was horrible.”
“[I’m] the last person in the world that I thought it would happen to. And right on Broadway and 38th,” he said, which he used to think was a safe area.
“But what is safe anymore? I don’t know,” Gula said. “Look where the stabbings took place. Is anything a safe area? What’s being done? It’s frightening.”
“I walk in the daylight. And I thought I was very safe,” he added. “Apparently, that’s not true.”
Gula, who has lived in the Big Apple since 1986 and works for a business that makes for props for TV shoots, said he wants city officials, including Mayor Eric Adams, to do more to combat crime in the city, including deploying more police officers.
Adams on Tuesday called on Albany pols to work to get mentally ill homeless people off the streets involuntarily in light of the fatal triple stabbing.
“Well, I live on East 40th Street. I think it’s a fairly safe area,” Gula said.
“I run into homeless everywhere … I don’t know who’s mentally ill and what whatnot … So there’s, there’s an abundance of them around, like, and I walk by, and I’m like, ‘What are these people gonna do to me next?’’