VIDEO: New York Panhandler Hurls Brick at 63-Year-Old Man’s Face

A panhandler allegedly threw a brick at a 63-year-old handyman outside of a bagel shop in the lower east side of New York the morning of September 15.

Video of the attack, which took place around 8 a.m., shows the man holding a chair menacingly over the victim before he put the chair down and punched the victim with a right hook. He then appears to wrestle to the ground the victim, who works as a handyman for the bagel shop Kossar’s Bagel & Bialys.

The surveillance video cut to another angle in which the 63-year-old was protecting himself from the panhandler while wielding a stick at which point, the assailant apparently grabbed a brick and hurled it at the man from a point-blank distance. After striking the victim in the face, the panhandler walked away from the scene.

The “suspect has actually come around many times before, asking for money,” according to Natalie Duddridge of CBS New York. The manager “says she’s even given him food to appease him, but this time he was harassing customers, so a staff member asked him to leave and that’s when he attacked.”

The handyman, “approached him and said, ‘You should move on. We can get you a bagel, can get you a coffee,’” the shop’s manager told the New York Daily News. “Because we normally do that when you see a homeless person out there. … The guy took offense, it seems, to it and he attacked, unfortunately, one of my guys.”

“He was really shaken up about it because nobody expects that, you know?” the manager explained. “He went to the hospital and got checked on to make sure everything is OK.”

The assault comes as New York has seen a rise in violent crimes as of late. A man kicked a woman down an escalator at a subway station in Brooklyn on September 9. A 77-year-old woman was assaulted before her purse and bible were stolen on September 12.

Anyone with information regarding the attack is encouraged to contact NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).