NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – A 33-year-old man armed with a glass bottle attacked three people at random in Midtown Manhattan on Thursday evening—including two at the Bryant Park Whole Foods Market and a third at the Rockefeller Center subway station—before he was arrested and charged with felony assault, police said.
The unprovoked rampage started just after 6:30 p.m. outside the Whole Foods at West 41st Street and Sixth Avenue, where the unhinged man struck a 23-year-old man with the bottle, according to cops.
He then went to the second floor of the Whole Foods and bashed a 49-year-old woman over the head, police said.
After the Whole Foods assaults, he fled north to West 47th Street and Sixth Avenue, where he attacked a 55-year-old woman on a D train at the 47th–50th Streets–Rockefeller Center station, according to police.
All three victims suffered lacerations from the glass bottle, police said.
The first two victims were taken to NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue in stable condition. Images from the New York Post show the female victim being wheeled out of the store by EMS with her head wrapped in bandages.
EMS transported the third victim to Weill Cornell Medical Center, where she was also listed in stable condition.
NYPD officers located the suspect, Michael Howell, on West 46th Street and arrested him. He was taken to the Midtown Precinct South stationhouse and charged with three counts of felony assault.
According to WABC-TV, he was also charged in an open assault complaint from August in which a subway rider was punched on an A-line train at the 42nd Street–Port Authority Bus Terminal station. His record includes several petit larceny arrests in August for allegedly shoplifting at T.J. Maxx and Nordstrom stores.