An ice pick-wielding homeless “lunatic” with a criminal history pushed an elderly man to the ground after threatening others in Midtown Tuesday morning, police and the victim said.
The victim, Robert Gula, 76, was arrested near his office around 10:20 a.m. by an unhinged thug, identified by police as Brian Wilbur, who had just shoved another woman moments earlier. He said he was attacked even though he tried to escape.
“So there's this crazy screaming going on at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 38th Street,” Gura told the Post.
“So I said, 'Oh, I better get away from him,' and everyone's looking at him, and he walks up to the woman and says, 'F, king, B, H.' Masu. He pushes her. I said, 'Oh my God.' ”
Gula walked to Broadway to drop off a letter and thought he was safe when the suspect fired at him.
“Suddenly I heard a scream and he pushed me and I fell down on the road,” he recalled. “I have bruises on my knees and elbows.”
Wilbur, 36, was arrested near the scene and charged with second-degree assault, authorities said.
According to police, he has been arrested four times so far, including on suspicion of second-degree assault in October 2021. Other past charges include criminal mischief, intimidation with a weapon and hate crimes, including jumping from a turnstile, police said.
Luckily, Gura wasn't stabbed, but after being shoved in Manhattan on Monday, he remembered the knife-wielding homeless man who stabbed three innocent victims to death.
“But the day before I was thinking about knives,” he said. “And oh, that was awful.”
“[I’m] The last person in the world I thought that would happen. And it's right off Broadway and 38th Street,” he said, which he thought was a safe area.
“But what is safe anymore? I don't know,” Gula said. “Look where the sting happened. Is there a safe place? What is going on? It's scary.”
“I walk during the day and I felt very safe,” he added. “Apparently that's not true.”
Gula, who has lived in the Big Apple since 1986 and works for a company that makes props for television shoots, has asked city officials, including Mayor Eric Adams, to do more to combat crime in the city, including hiring more police officers. He said he would like the government to make more efforts. .
Adams on Tuesday called on Albany police to remove involuntary mentally ill homeless people from the streets in light of the triple stabbing.
“Well, I live on East 40th Street, and I think it's a pretty safe neighborhood,” Gula said.
“You run into homeless people everywhere…You don't know who's mentally ill or anything like that…So there's a lot of homeless people around and you walk by and you're like, 'What are these people going to do?' I thought, “Am I next?” ”
