A Yonkers man was charged with attempted murder after a seemingly random assault turned a mundane errand into a bloody struggle.
The scene, captured by bank security cameras, lasts less than a minute, but it is a chilling instance of a mundane weekend errand suddenly becoming a bloody, life-or-death struggle.
A man at an A.T.M. in Lower Manhattan does not notice when another man with a hatchet in his right hand enters the bank lobby behind him, the footage shows. Seconds later, the second man swings the blade violently at the back of the A.T.M. user’s leg.
The man being attacked tries to protect himself with his backpack, then grabs at his attacker in a desperate bid to disarm him. The man with the hatchet lands several blows, eventually drawing blood. Then, with his victim out of the frame, he smashes several A.T.M. screens, drops the hatchet and walks away.
On Wednesday, the police arrested Aaron Garcia of Yonkers, N.Y., as the suspect in the attack, charging him with attempted murder and assault. After being taken into custody late Tuesday, Mr. Garcia, 37, was taken to Bellevue Medical Center for a psychiatric evaluation, the police said. It was unclear whether he had a lawyer.
The victim of the attack, Miguel Solorzano, was recovering at a hospital on Wednesday. Contacted by phone, Mr. Solorzano, 50, of Corona, Queens, declined to discuss the attack beyond saying in Spanish that things were “crazy.”
The attack at the bank was among the latest in a flurry of random assaults in New York that have put some residents on edge while raising concerns about a possible uptick in crime as the city charts a path out of the pandemic and back to some semblance of normalcy.
Many of the most unsettling incidents have involved anti-Asian bias, according to the authorities. Several of those, and some others, have come on the subway. On Sunday evening alone, around the time that Mr. Solorzano was attacked, there were examples of both.
At about 6:50 p.m. at the Atlantic Avenue subway station in Brooklyn, one man approached another and punched him repeatedly, cutting the victim and breaking bones in his face before running off, the police said. Shortly before that on West 54th Street in Manhattan, the police said, a man accosted a 63-year-old Asian woman, punching her in the face and then shoving her to the ground while making anti-Asian comments.
The police in Yonkers said they had four bench warrants and an active arrest warrant for Mr. Garcia. He is accused there of aggravated harassment, stalking and criminal contempt stemming from several arrests last year and an episode this year, the Yonkers police said.
On Wednesday, the bank on Broadway was open for business, with black garbage bags covering the broken A.T.M. screens and caution tape strung across them. A worker who answered the phone at the branch declined to comment.
A spokeswoman for JP Morgan Chase said the company had “provided critical information that led to the arrest” of Mr. Garcia and had contacted Mr. Solorzano as well.
Concerns about crime became a top issue in this year’s mayoral race, as various Democratic candidates tried to position themselves as the best equipped to improve public safety.
In a statement posted on Twitter on Wednesday, Eric Adams — a former police captain who won the Democratic primary and is almost certain to be the city’s next mayor — linked the attack on Mr. Solorzano to “multiple failures” in a “dysfunctional government.”
“Protecting innocent New Yorkers and preventing these incidents — not just reacting to them — must be the immediate goal of law enforcement and our mental health services,” he wrote.
Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, held a news conference Wednesday morning outside the bank. He angrily accused Mayor Bill de Blasio of not being tough enough on crime and failing to address the problem of mental illness among homeless people and others.
“He is not dealing with the No. 1 issue today,” Mr. Sliwa said, “and that is the explosion of emotionally disturbed persons who roam the streets, the subway, live in the parks, are a danger to themselves, but most importantly, a danger to all.”
Sean Piccoli and Ed Shanahan contributed reporting.
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