Freed to 'strike again'
Thug ‘mugs’ after short jail stay for similar attack
The career criminal who allegedly attacked a couple out celebrating their wedding anniversary in Midtown last week recently assaulted another couple in Manhattan in a similar fashion — and spent less than four months in jail for it, The Post has learned.
At about 7 p.m. last Nov. 11, Derrick Boyce suddenly and randomly set upon Ronen Cohen, 29, who was walking with his 28year-old fiancée on East 110th Street in Harlem.
Cohen recalled that an elderly woman had stopped the two to ask a question.
“As we were talking to her, this guy came up to us and tapped her [his fiancée] on the shoulder. He spat in her face, and then immediately turned to me and started punching me in the face,” Cohen said.
He added that the vicious thug kept “repeatedly punching me in the face, reaching for my pockets, and hitting me.”
At that point, Cohen’s horrified fiancée, who asked to remain anonymous, said she was “screaming for help.”
“It happened really fast,” the woman said.
“When he walked away, it was the weirdest thing — he didn’t run. He just walked very casually like nothing had happened.”
After throwing Cohen into the middle of the street, the 40-year-
old Boyce began to move in on the woman, prompting her to run.
“I ran half a block,” she recalled.
That’s when Cohen went into a pizzeria and pleaded for someone to call the cops.
“Everyone just sort of stared at me like I was some psycho, so I called the police myself,” said Cohen, who added that Boyce “beat me up pretty bad in the face.”
Police arrived and searched for Boyce, who was nabbed when Cohen’s fiancée pointed him out.
He ultimately pleaded guilty to assault in the third-degree and was sentenced to four months in jail, records show.
On Feb. 28, Boyce was released from jail.
About three months later, he allegedly mugged Jeremy Goldberg and his wife, Paola, 35-yearold restaurateurs from West Orange, NJ.
The couple — in Midtown celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary Tuesday — had just come from seeing the hit Broadway musical “Dear Evan Hansen” when Boyce walked up to
them on Eighth Avenue, spit on Paola and repeatedly punched Jeremy.
Boyce, who has 32 arrests on his record, was picked up by cops a short time later.
When a Post reporter told Jeremy Goldberg that Boyce was previously arrested for a similar attack, he said he was “shocked.”
“The guy needs help,” Goldberg said. “I’m not sure locking him up is the answer . . . He shouldn’t be in the streets.”
Boyce is now being held without bail.