A man buying an apple from a Midtown fruit stand Friday morning was whacked in the head with a broomstick by a deranged fiend demanding a dollar from him, witnesses said.
The 52-year-old victim was near the corner of West 43rd Street on Ninth Avenue just after 11 a.m. when the drunken homeless man, identified as 34-year-old Jodache DuPont, demanded a dollar, witnesses and police said.
The man refused, but Kumar Chanda, 36, who works at the fruit stand, said DuPont persisted despite multiple requests to leave them alone.
Chanda went around the corner to the Manhattan Plaza apartment building to ask for help and when he returned, found the customer bloodied and DuPont nearby holding the fruit stand broom, which he had broken over the victim’s head, police said.
“Lots and lots of blood,” Chanda said.
Police arrested DuPont within minutes, a witness said.
“It was one of those things where everything happened right on time. The guy was in handcuffs in the car by the time I got out there. The whole thing was less than five minutes,” said a security guard from Manhattan Plaza who declined to give his name.
Before getting into an ambulance, the victim was seen holding his bloodied head and telling police, “I didn’t do anything,” the guard said.
The victim’s head was bandaged at the scene and he was taken to Bellevue Hospital.
DuPont was charged with assault in the second degree.
Additional reporting by Gabrielle Fonrouge