NYC slasher shouted he was ‘going to kill a bitch�before deranged bottle attack as victim remains on ventilator: prosecutors
The deranged vagrant charged with stabbing an off-Broadway costume designer with a broken bottle — leaving her fighting for her life — was “screaming he was going to kill a bitchâ€?before the vicious assault, Manhattan prosecutors revealed Wednesday.
Muslim Brunson, 46, was ordered held without bail and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation as he was arraigned on attempted murder and assault charges, with his lawyer telling the judge the career criminal had only been back in the Big Apple for 60 days before he allegedly launched the senseless attack in Soho on Monday afternoon.
Brunson, who has a history of emotionally disturbed behavior in the five boroughs, was also hospitalized at a psych hospital in Baltimore in 2022, prosecutors said.
He is accused of slashing 25-year-old Megan Berg in the neck with a broken bottle in a random attack that has the young Arizona native clinging to life. She remained on a respirator at Bellevue Hospital on Wednesday.
Berg had to undergo emergency surgery after that incident and needed as many as 40 stitches to close two gashes on her neck, prosecutors said.
Police said Brunson first threw the bottle at another woman on a Soho street corner, then picked up the pieces and attacked Berg.
“In broad daylight, the defendant attacked two complete strangers within minutes in front of numerous witnesses,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Mary Simeone said. “Upon his arrest, the defendant screamed threats at an eyewitness who assisted the police in his apprehension.”
Brunson is a career criminal with a history of mental health issues and a string of arrests, including for a violent 2019 subway robbery of a 13-year-old boy in Brooklyn and a brutal attack on an off-duty NYPD civilian employee in 2022. That attack was so vicious that the victim suffered a fractured cheekbone and eye socket, according to reports.
The deranged vagrant served at least one stint in state prison and was once ordered into a mental health program that saw him undergo three dozen compliance hearings, sources said.
Brunson’s history includes several encounters with authorities as an emotionally disturbed person, with at least three reports that he was hearing voices telling him to hurt others, the sources said.
Simeone said in court that Brunson’s history of mental instability includes a 2022 bust in Baltimore for attempted murder, arson, and assault, which landed him in a psychiatric hospital.
Details of that case were not immediately available.
His alleged attack on Berg was just the latest bust on his rap sheet.
Brunson allegedly first targeted the first woman at the intersection of Broome and Wooster streets around 3 p.m. Monday, prosecutors said.
The unidentified woman told police she felt something hit her back and turned to see a man wearing a navy blue sweatshirt “holding a large, green glass bottle in his hand,” according to a criminal complaint.
“I’m going to kill a bitch,” she heard the brute shout.
She said she ran away but came back when she heard “a woman screaming and the sound of breaking glass,” the document said.
Meanwhile, Berg told police she was walking down the street when she saw a man “holding a bottle up at her and throw said bottle at her neck,â€?according to the document.
Cops picked Brunson up nearby and charged him with the attack.
“What is clear from Mr. Brunson’s record is that he is struggling with a mental health crisis,” defense attorney Mildred Morillo said.
“And while none of us would blame someone with a stomach virus for vomiting, it does not make sense to then say that he has a demonstrated contempt for law enforcement,” Morillo added.
Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Beverly Tatham then ordered that Brunson be held without bail and undergo a psych exam.
Berg was “living her dream�as a costume designer on Big Apple musical productions, her father told The Post this week.
A graduate of the University of Arizona and Purdue University, she moved to New York several years ago to work in theater.
“Moving to New York City was her dream,�said her father, George Berg. “It’s just crazy. She’s still hanging on.�/p>
Stephen Eide, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said the vicious attack that left her grievously injured is in part a consequence of a failed systemic approach to the mentally ill — and potentially dangerous.
“The idea of the Mental Health Court is that it’s supposed to help a niche population, not the people with the most serious psychiatric problems and not the people who have been charged with the most serious crimes,” he said.
“Theoretically, it’s for someone who we think can live in the community setting under supervision, provided he checks in and complies with the treatment program and sticks with the program,” Eide said. “But they don’t always pick the right people for these programs — and sometimes people fail.”
Meanwhile, locals in the Soho neighborhood where Berg was attacked told The Post that Brunson is a familiar figure on the block.
“He looks like he has a sick mind because of his actions — how he talks to people, he looks jittery, nervous, anxious,” said Abdul Abdul, who owns a garage in the area. “I see him on Canal Street and Broadway.”
One Canal Street pizzeria worker said Brunson is a regular at the sport — and described the vagrant’s behavior as unpredictable.
“Sometimes he looks normal and waits his turn, but other times he cuts the line and stands in the corner and asks, ‘Why don’t you give me my pizza?'” the worker, who identified himself as Md Mamun, said this week.
“I’d say, ‘My friend, just give me one minute,’ and he’d calm down and say, ‘Okay,'” Mamun said. “He never gets physical. He never showed me that other side of him.”
— Additional reporting by Steven Vago and Georgett Roberts
