Boy-bashing susp busted

16-yr.-old ‘tough kid’ held

Cops say they have arrested a teenage boy shown punching and taunting a young boy in a Brooklyn housing project in a heartbreaking viral video.

In the now-deleted video (frame, bottom) taken in the Albany Houses in Crown Heights the youngster, dressed in a tan sweater and a bright-colored backpack, cowers in a vestibule as the heartless teen, wearing a fur-rimmed hooded coat and a bandanna over his head ridicules and assaults him.

“We appreciate the many tips offered regarding this video,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea tweeted Thursday morning. “Please be assured, the child is now safe and the subject has been apprehended.”

Cops say they arrested a 16-yearold boy about 8:40 p.m. Wednesday. He is charged with acting in a manner injurious to a child.

The Daily News is not publishing the suspect’s name because he is being charged as a juvenile.

“He’s an a—hole,” said a neighbor of the suspect who asked that his name not be used for fear of retaliation.

“He hangs out in my building and is cool with us, but he is one of those guys who tries and makes a name for himself . . . He’s a neighborhood tough kid.”

Neighbors said the teen beat up the boy because the child didn’t have candy for him.

“I don’t like them little kids nowadays,” the teen says in the video as someone off camera laughs. “I can’t get no candy,” he tells the boy and punches him in the side of the face.

As the boy holds his head and cries, the teen barks at him, “What’s wrong with that?” He shouts noises at the boy and slams his head into a wall.

“He is such a sweetheart,” neighbor Mary Lester said of the victim. “Very friendly, definitely a good kid.”

Lester’s 9-year-old son Joshua was once one of the victim’s playmates.

“He was very nice,” Joshua said. “When he invited me to play basketball with him, he said later that he had to go home to help his grandma do laundry.”

Lester said a group of parents in the neighborhood who have seen the video want to get together and pool some money to give the victim “a great Christmas.”

Instagram star Popiando Vazquez posted the video Wednesday night, urging people to identify the creep and young victim.

“Make sure this dude never does this again,” Vazquez wrote.

The video was watched more than 60,000 times within about two hours before it was taken down.