Raheem Ramsarran punches girl in the head on a visit to New York with mom Yelena Contreras Molerio

A young girl who was on a trip to New York City with her mother was punched in the head by an ’emotionally disturbed’ man on Monday in Midtown Manhattan. 

Yelena Contreras Molerio, 36, from Miami, was walking on the street with her nine-year-old daughter close to Central Park, when she was sucker-punched on the left side of her head. 

The suspect was quickly caught after a veteran doorman working at the nearby Plaza Hotel apprehended Raheem Ramsarran, 27, and managed to hold onto him until police arrived. 

The attack happened on a mild and sunny spring morning, at about 11:20am, on the corner of Central Park South and Grand Army Plaza. 

It is the latest attack in a string of random assaults on the New York public whether it be on the city’s subway system or above ground.

Monday morning’s attack on a nine-year-old girl happened at about 11:20am on the corner of Central Park South and Grand Army Plaza

Doorman, Neil Johnson, 60, was working the front door at the famous luxury hotel when he heard the commotion and ran over to the little girl and her mother to help. He said the youngster was clutching her head and was clearly in pain. 

‘I saw the woman crying and they’re running away from this guy and he’s walking fast toward them. So got to do something. I got in between them and this crazy guy. And then another guy joined me, who apparently saw the whole thing happened. So we just made sure that this person couldn’t go,’ he told the New York Post .   

Johnson, who has worked at the hotel for 24 years, said he had not seen anything like the incident he witnessed on Monday. 

‘There’s always been fights and stuff like that but nothing that disturbing. This was just off the charts as far as sanity goes,’ he noted. ‘That little girl is never going to want to come to New York City ever again.’

Ramsarran was caught within 15 minutes of the alleged assault and is now in police custody. 

‘We saw a man with a backpack, a red hoodie and a beige jacket screaming at people and people literally running away from him and he was just like yelling,’ Kimberly Thomas, 24, told the Post moments after the assault happened.   

‘I thought he was chasing someone. I didn’t know he hit someone,’ she added. 

Although no arrest record exists for Ramsarran, police were called to his address in Queens in 2018 and 2019 over reports of an emotionally disturbed person.

On one of the occasions he said that he felt suicidal, was not on medication and wanted to go to hospital. 

‘After he realized he couldn’t go any further, we weren’t going to let him, he stayed there and started yelling, ‘Where are the cops? Where are the cops?’ Johnson said. 

Another nearby worker, Ahmed Ahmed, 41, who runs a food cart and was close by when the attack happened said that it appeared to him that the girl was pushed.

‘I seen this guy he had a bag and he ran into a small girl. [I saw him] push the girl on the ground and then run. 

A revolting attack where a man smeared feces over the face of a 43-year-old woman was caught on camera, last month

Monday’s attack comes after a string of high-profile random assaults. 

They include the vicious battering of a woman with a hammer by a homeless man in Queens and the smearing of feces on another woman in the Bronx – after which the alleged perpetrator, a violent criminal with a history of 44 arrests, was released without bail.

These incidents were in addition to the murder of Asian woman Christina Yuna Lee, 25, who was tailed to her apartment by another homeless man, Assamad Nash, 35, and stabbed to death in her own apartment.

One month earlier, Michelle Go, 40, was waiting on the platform at the Times Square subway station was killed when she was shoved onto the tracks. 

The New York subway has been ground zero for the latent crime wave after an alarming 73.3 percent increase in underground incidents – including 182 in February alone. 

Hate crimes have also doubled since last year — with anti-Asian attacks more than tripling and anti-Jewish complaints up by a whopping 54 percent over the same time last year, from 134 to 207 incidents. 

One recent poll revealed that nearly 75 percent of all New York City voters consider crime to be a ‘very serious’ problem — the highest number since polling began in 1999.

The one small ray of light for New York is that shootings declined slightly in February, by 1.3 percent over the same period in 2021.

‘The men and women of the New York City Police Department are proactively addressing the deep-rooted causes of criminal behavior,’ Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell said in a statement at the time.

‘The NYPD will never relent, and the department has made far too much progress over the decades – and invested far too much in the communities it serves – to fall back by any measure. New Yorkers deserve better.’

Many of New York City’s most recent violent crimes have been perpetrated by repeat offenders – a development that comes after Manhattan’s District Attorney Alvin Bragg, 48, downgraded many crimes to misdemeanors.

Last month, the mayor announced that the NYPD would deploy 1,000 additional officers and separate teams of health workers to the city’s subway system to crack down on the influx of underground crime.

Christina Yuna Lee, 35, left was found dead last month after being stabbed in her own apartment. Michelle Go, 40, right, was at the Times Square subway platform when she was shoved onto the tracks