Beat brute gets busted
Ex-con held in attacks on women
A man accused of a spree of crazed assaults on random Brooklyn women is an ex-con convicted of beating and robbing at least two people in recent years, police said.
Khari Covington, 29, was finally busted Tuesday after surveillance footage posted on Instagram appeared to show him repeatedly walloping a woman behind the counter of a Bushwick smoke shop.
Police have linked Covington to five other attacks on women at the Morgan Ave. L train station in Bushwick dating back to November. He was charged Tuesday with eight counts of assault as a hate crime and one count of attempted robbery as a hate crime. He was awaiting arraignment Wednesday night.
Covington was charged with hate crimes for targeting women — and made statements that he despises women after his arrest, sources said.
“I literally have PTSD from that station” victim Manal Guennad, 26, who was attacked Saturday at the Morgan Ave. station, told the Daily News. “I feel like this guy is always there, waiting for his next victim.”
The woman-hating suspect served nearly two years in Riverview Correctional Facility after pleading guilty in May 2013 to beating and robbing a 39-yearold deliveryman dropping off an order on W. 113th St. in Harlem, police said. Covington repeatedly punched the man in the head, knocking out one of his teeth before swiping $160 from his front pocket.
Covington was released on parole in April 2015, but it wasn’t long before he was arrested in August of that year for beating and robbing a 59-year-old woman for her cell phone.
Covington was convicted of attempted robbery for that attack and sent to the Mohawk Correctional Facility. He was paroled in April 2020.
Benjamin Bates, who works with the woman who was attacked Monday at the Sunflower Glass Co. Smoke Shop, said she’s still in shock over the harrowing ordeal.
“Although she’s a very, very tough girl as you can tell from the video —she put up a fight — stuff like that’s traumatic,” said 22-year-old Bates.
“We’re giving her time off, full mental support,” he added. “This is like a family. . . . We’re gonna make sure she gets all the help she needs.”
Bates said the woman was bruised up badly but did not suffer any broken bones and has been released from the hospital.
“I’m more worried about mental health,” Bates said.
He had seen Covington around the smoke shop — and thought Covington might have been interested in the women who worked at the store.
“We had two women working here, I think he liked them a little because he kept coming here, for about a month,” Bates said.
He added that Covington came to the store that afternoon and purchased something, then returned around 5 p.m., which is when the beating took place.
One man at the nearby Peter Jay Sharp Center for Opportunity, a homeless shelter where Covington lived, said he didn’t like the suspect even before learning of his assault arrest.
“He was annoying. He had girl problems. He told me his girl cheated on him with multiple guys,” the man said. “That don’t give a purpose to beat women.”
A former Harlem neighbor of Covington’s who declined to give her name recalled his teen years as troubled, and knew that he had done a stint in prison.
“He’s got a little something, since he was young,” she said, pointing to her head.