HATCHET SUSP ‘A LITTLE OFF-CENTER’
Hatchet suspect stuns family, held after window-bash spree
Man police identified as Aaron Garcia is caught on video in random hatchet attack on Miguel Solorzano in a lower Manhattan bank. Solorzano (inset), from his hospital bed, tells News of the brutal encounter.
The hatchet-wielding suspect arrested for hacking at a defenseless stranger in a crazed caught-oncamera attack inside a Manhattan bank threatened another victim with a hammer before he was finally nabbed, police said Wednesday.
The suspect, identified by police sources as Aaron Garcia, used the hammer to bash in several parked car windows and shatter windows at a Chelsea restaurant and nearby shelter before cops arrested him at Eighth Ave. and W. 19th St. about 9:20 p.m. on Tuesday, officials said.
Garcia, 37, was already being sought for attacking Miguel Solorzano, 50, at an
ATM inside the Chase Bank on Broadway near Morris St. in the Financial District on Sunday.
Garcia’s relatives were stunned that he had been arrested — and that he was being sought for a bloody hatchet attack.
“This can’t be true,” said one shocked close relative, who asked not to be named. “If you knew what kind of people we are, you would understand why I’m reacting this way.”
“I can’t imagine he’s gone that far,” she added. “Nobody told us anything . ... I can’t imagine that would be linked to us. I don’t understand.”
Garcia was in the Army and served in Iraq, his relative said. When he returned, he was never the same, she said.
“He was a little off-center. He was in combat. All he would say is, ‘I saw dead bodies,’” the relative said.
He gradually started to become at times rude and disrespectful, but never was violent, the relative explained. Garia was living with his mother, but moved out a year ago. The relative assumed he had a new place of his own.
Garcia, wearing a black surgical mask, was caught on camera casually walking into the bank about 5:30 p.m. holding a hatchet in his right hand — and then suddenly lunging at Solorzano without warning from behind.
“He hit me. In the bank, he hit me,” a stillstunned Solorzano told the Daily News on Tuesday, speaking in Spanish from his bed at Bellevue Hospital.
Solorzano, who lives in Queens, needed two surgeries after the bloody attack, his friend Manny told The News.
Cops scouring the area for video near the bank recovered images of Garcia without his mask. A cop from the 1st Precinct recognized him from an Aug. 4 incident in which he was acting irrationally, police sources said.
Investigators got Garcia’s name from that incident and were looking for him when he went berserk in Chelsea, cops said. He had ditched the hatchet in the bank and was now swinging a hammer, authorities allege.
Police said Garcia started breaking car windows at about 8 p.m. Then, as he walked past Elmo’s Restaurant on Seventh Ave. near W. 20th St., he bumped into a 54-year-old stranger. He raised his hammer as if he was going to hit him and grunted before running off, cops said.
He allegedly bashed in a window at Rebar Chelsea, a popular gay bar on W. 19th St. and Seventh Ave., before being arrested around the corner, cops said.
Garcia was brought to Bellevue Hospital to undergo a psychiatric evaluation Tuesday night, cops said. Criminal charges were pending. Solorzano, his alleged victim, is being treated at the same facility.
The hardworking Mexican immigrant, who has a wife and two kids south of the border, broke down in his hospital bed when a friend showed him video of the attack.
“Please, please,” Solorzano said, his voice shaking. “I don’t want to see it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Solorzano asked, telling the friend to send the footage to his wife.
Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa blasted city officials for not doing more to address the needs of the mentally ill.
“It could have been any ATM vestibule anywhere in the five boroughs,” said Sliwa, who, as founder of the Guardian Angels crime protection group, said he encountered many emotionally disturbed people on the subway. “We find out time and time again that these are people who have been diagnosed with serious mental issues. They cut loose these men and women. They need to be under psychiatric care.”
Sliwa, standing outside the bank where Solórzano was attacked, urged the city to enforce “involuntary inpatient care” to get dangerous mentally ill people off the street and into facilities where they can get the help they need.
“We have the facilities to help them. We have the money to help them,” Sliwa said. “We need to make this an emergency.”
Meanwhile, NYPD Chief of Department Rodney Harrison sent out a memo ordering supervisors to respond to every call involving an emotionally disturbed person, and fill out forms detailing the actions they took to resolve the situations.
Sources said this is an attempt to make supervisors more accountable for incidents, and also, to put pressure on them to be more proactive in dealing with calls involving the mentally ill.
On top of the charges Garcia is facing in Manhattan, police in Westchester County filed a warrant for his arrest over several stalking and domestic incidents that happened in Yonkers in 2020 and earlier this year, officials said.