MTA Police apprehended the deranged man who allegedly punched a 9-year-old girl in a random attack at Grand Central Terminal on Saturday morning.
Jean Carlos Zarzuela, 30, faces a second-degree assault charge for the attack that occurred at about 11:49 a.m. on April 13 inside the terminal’s dining concourse.
Court records noted that Zarzuela had been arrested in a previous assault case at Grand Central Station earlier this month — but was out on the streets without bail when he allegedly struck on Saturday.
According to the MTA Police Department, Zarzuela allegedly approached the girl as she stood near her mother, and then sucker-punched the youngster in the face without any provocation.
The girl, the MTA reported, suffered dizziness and pain. After MTA Police officers provided initial assistance, EMS rushed her to NYU Langone-Tisch Hospital, where she was treated.
Zarzuela had fled the location shortly after the sucker-punch. Sources with the MTA Police said that after rapidly identifying him as the suspect, they tracked him down to the Lexington Avenue-125th Street station on the 4/5/6 lines in East Harlem, where he is known to frequent. That station is in close proximity to a homeless shelter which he provided to law enforcement agents as his residence.
At about 10:20 p.m. on April 13, members of the NYPD Transit Bureau, after receiving information about Zarzuela from MTA Police, located the suspect just outside a turnstile area at the Lexington Avenue-125th Street station, sources familiar with the case said. Zarzuela was taken into custody by the MTA Police and charged with aggravated assault on a victim under age 11, second-degree assault and attempted assault, and third-degree assault.
It was not Zarzuela’s first run in with the law. Sources familiar with the investigation said that he has eight prior arrests to his name, including an April 4 collar for a similar assault at a Grand Central Terminal passageway near Lexington Avenue on a 54-year-old woman.
In that incident, MTA Police sources said, Zarzuela allegedly punched the victim in the face without provocation or warning, breaking her nose. MTA Police officers arrested him on the spot and booked him on a second-degree felony assault charge.
But that charge was downgraded to a third-degree misdemeanor assault count when Zarzuela appeared in New York County Criminal Court for arraignment later that day, according to court records. Prosecutors had requested that he remain behind bars on $10,000 bail; sources said that bail had been reduced to $2,500, which Zarzuela could not make.
However, five days later at a follow-up hearing, Judge Laurie Peterson ordered Zarzuela released from custody without bail, court records noted.
Peterson, who had ordered former Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg to serve a five-month sentence for perjury last week in connection with the former president’s civil fraud trial, gained notoriety in 2020 when she set free an individual accused of a bloody attack on a police officer amid the George Floyd protests that summer.
An MTA spokesperson expressed outrage that an alleged repeat offender was allowed to attack another individual just days after his arrest and release from custody in a similar case.
“It doesn’t make any sense that this guy — who recently was released after being charged with randomly punching someone else and breaking that victim’s nose — should be back in a public space where he can attack others, especially children,” said MTA Communications Director Tim Minton in a statement provided to amNewYork Metro. “The people responsible for the criminal justice system need to learn from this episode before more innocent people become victims.”
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