Soho bottle-slash attack suspect has history of assaults: sources
The homeless man who police say attacked two women in Soho with a glass bottle, viciously slashing one in the throat, has a history of arrests for assault and two felony convictions.
Tuesday afternoon, Muslim Brunson, 46, was awaiting arraignment for the Monday attacks on Megan Berg, a 25-year-old costume designer whose trachea was damaged, and the 29-year-old woman he struck over the head with the bottle near Broome St. and Wooster St. around 3 p.m.
Brunson has five prior arrests dating back to 2019, four of them for assault, police said.
In September 2019, he pushed a 13-year-old male passenger out of a train car and onto the platform at the Van Siclen Ave. subway station in Brownsville, Brooklyn, after snatching the teen's cell phone, sources said.
Bail was set in that case, but Brunson was later released without bail, and the case was slated to move to mental health court.
After his release, Brunson missed at least one court date and so a bench warrant was issued. He was arrested after the warrant and was jailed from Feb. 2 to July 22, 2021, sources said.
On July 22, 2021, he was convicted of robbery after pleading in mental health court and released pending sentencing.
While awaiting sentencing, Brunson committed a felony assault, slamming a woman's head into a subway pole aboard a Brooklyn-bound No. 4 train near the Fulton St. station on July 4, 2022, fracturing the victim's cheekbone and an orbital bone, sources said.
Upon his arrest on July 6, 2022, he assaulted a cop, the sources added.
Brunson was again jailed until Dec. 7, 2022, when he pleaded guilty to attempted assault and was convicted of the 4 train attack, receiving a 364-day sentence, to run concurrently with the one-to-three-year sentence he received for the robbery case.
In late December 2022, Brunson was moved to the Sing Sing Correctional Facility, according to state records, and paroled in August 2023.
A public lewdness arrest followed in January 2024, but that case is sealed, sources said.
Brunson, who police sources say is mentally ill, completed probation in February 2024.
Berg, an Arizona native, was scouting out boutiques in Soho to buy clothing and fabrics for an upcoming theater project when Brunson allegedly attacked her.
Moments earlier, Brunson had assaulted a 29-year-old woman at the same corner, smashing the glass bottle over her head before stabbing Berg, police said.
Berg's husband and mother flew to New York to be with the Off-Broadway costumer at Bellevue Hospital after she underwent surgery.
'We're all in shock,' Berg's mother told the Daily News Tuesday. 'She loved [New York City]. It was her dream to be a costume designer and she was working in the field she loved.'
'He hit her in the trachea,' she added. 'We don't know [the extent of the damage].'
A security guard who works at a sunglasses store near the scene of the incident heard Berg screaming and ran to her aid.
'I applied pressure on her neck,' the security guard said. 'Girls came to help with a tissue. A guy pulled over [and] he had tissues. We tried to apply as much pressure as we can.'
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