New video captures the heartbreaking moment a mob of angry citizens surrounded a man suspected of brutally slashing an 11-year-old girl over the head with a box cutter.
In the video, Shaquan Cummings, 30, who also allegedly punched a 43-year-old woman during his bloody crime spree Friday afternoon, is cornered by a mob of angry Harlem residents.
A legion of NYPD officers push back the angry citizens, push them back, and form a circle around the suspected killer, who cowers behind them.
A text appears on the screen saying: ‘They finally caught him!!!’
Desperate police officers stand shoulder to shoulder and try to protect Cummings, who has more than 20 previous arrests, as the crowd boils and rushes toward him.
At one point in the video, an angry citizen hits Cummings with his cane.
‘Back!’ A police officer shouts to the crowd in a hoarse voice.
Tired of the crime plaguing their neighborhood, Harlem residents seem willing to take the law into their own hands.
‘Do not let him go!’ someone in the crowd shouts.
Another police officer jumps into the fray and stands in front of the suspect.
“You’re defending a damn criminal,” one resident shouts.
On Friday, Cummings allegedly attacked an 11-year-old girl with a box cutter outside the 116th Street 6 subway station.
Cummings allegedly stabbed the girl in the back of the head, cutting off her ear as she walked down the street and held her mother’s hand.
The girl reportedly felt something on the back of her head and when her mother, Gorzata Sladek, turned around, she saw “a box cutter.”
Cummings allegedly ducked into the subway after the attack and escaped even as Sladek chased the attacker.
‘Awful. “It’s terrible to see a girl with her head cut in half,” the victim’s mother told New York Post.
A UPS employee who saw doctors treating the injured girl said she was “scared and crying.”
He continued: ‘His head (was) bloody. The bleeding can’t stop. She (she was) bleeding on his hand and on her shirt…she was crying. Scared.’
After the savage attack, the girl underwent intensive surgery that required countless staples and stitches to stop the wound.
But the emotional scars remain, the mother said. She called the terrifying episode “traumatizing.”
‘She is not well emotionally. She doesn’t want to go back to school. She doesn’t want to go outside anymore,” Sladek said.
Shaquan Cummings, 30, allegedly slashed an 11-year-old girl over the head with a box cutter after hitting a woman in a brutal crime spree on Friday afternoon. Cummings was later surrounded by an angry crowd, from which police had to protect him.
After allegedly brutally attacking Sladek’s 11-year-old son, Cummings was detained by authorities just a block away, where he had allegedly assaulted a 43-year-old woman earlier that afternoon.
The woman refused medical treatment.
On Friday night, Cummings was charged with two counts of assault and acting in a manner injurious to a child.
Cummings’ more than 20 previous arrests include assault, criminal mischief and fare evasion.
His most recent arrest was just two months ago on an assault charge.
In a statement to the Post, Sladek expressed frustration at the level of violence on the streets, a sentiment shared by the angry crowd that surrounded Cummings.
“You should be able to walk down the street and not worry about someone attacking you…not even attacking a dog, but a small child.”