Laurance Gendreau, 35, was charged on Friday with assaulting the boy
Charges have been filed against the homeless man who is accused of attacking a seven-year-old boy and leaving him in critical condition in New York City.
Laurance Gendreau, 35, was charged on Friday with assault, acting in a manner injurious to a child younger than 17 and harassment.
Gendreau had a history of violent criminality and mental illness that made him a ‘ticking time bomb’ waiting to go off, police and court records show.
The horrifying incident happened in Queens when the unidentified boy was walking with his parents around 5.40pm in the Kew Gardens neighborhood.
Witnesses say the suspect approached the young boy and his 10-year-old brother while they were waiting outside their home for a pizza delivery.
Surveillance video moments after the attach shows the boy’s grandfather following a shirtless Gendreau as he calls 911 and frantically requests police and ambulance
The boy’s father speaks to the press as the community pray’s for the child’s recovery
The homeless man suddenly lifted the boy into the air and body slammed the child directly into the concrete sidewalk.
‘I was told that he picked him up in the air and threw him down into the ground and he banged his head fairly badly,’ the victim’s father Yaakov Portnoy told WCBS-TV. ‘He has two fractures in his skull, collapsed lung.’
‘I don’t wish that upon anybody. It’s not normal,’
Naftali Portnoy, the child’s grandfather, said he heard the boy scream.
‘You heard that scream, you knew something serious was going on, it’s a kid that was picked up and smashed to the ground, nothing less than that,’ he said.
The boy’s head took the brunt of the hit.
Video courtesy of PIX 11
Naftali Portnoy: ‘You heard that scream, you knew something serious was going on, it’s a kid that was picked up and smashed to the ground, nothing less than that’
Portnoy reportedly followed the homeless man, who was shirtless at the time, for more than two blocks towards Lefferts Blvd.
‘I went after him, followed him, called 911, the police found him…’ Portnoy said.
‘He did say ‘I’m bipolar’ his first words were ‘I’m bipolar’ and something about ‘kill the kid’ wanted to kill the kid.’
He was transported to the Cohen Children’s Medical Center, according to the New York Post, where he is being treated for hemorrhaging to the brain and facial contusions. He is in critical condition.
Gendreau was arrested by law enforcement and taken to the Jamaica Hospital for a mental evaluation.
Police officers (pictured) arrived to the scene and apprehended the suspect
The unidentified boy was taken to Cohen Children’s Medical Center (pictured) where he is being treated for hemorrhaging to the brain and facial contusions
Authorities say Gendreau is ’emotionally disturbed’ and his brother told the Post that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Gendreau has a lengthy criminal history, and at the time of the attack he was wanted on an open warrant for skipping a court appearance after he assaulted a woman in a Manhattan Popeye’s restaurant in January.
Court records show that in the Popeye’s incident, he attacked an elderly woman with a chair.
He was charged with felony assault, but prosecutors reduced the charge to a misdemeanor.
Police records show that Gendreau also threatened to ‘snap the neck’ of a mental health worker several years ago.
Just an hour before the attack on the young boy in Queens, Gendreau stole an 80-year-old woman’s iPad in the area, a police source told the Post.