A homeless man accused of striking an infant girl with a cellphone during an apparently random Manhattan attack has a lengthy arrest history that includes more than two dozen prior run-ins with police, law enforcement sources said.
Marc Okon, 49, was charged with assault and child endangerment after police said he launched into an erratic confrontation near Bryant Park on Saturday morning, allegedly hitting the child with the phone before trying to throw it at her mother in a daytime incident that startled pedestrians.
Okon has been arrested repeatedly in New York City, police said Sunday.
Authorities said he has been taken into custody 25 times since 2018 on allegations that have included forcible touching, public lewdness, menacing, grand larceny, criminal mischief and petit larceny.
Police said Okon was arrested at least three times last year, including most recently in July 2025 on a public lewdness charge on the Upper West Side. He had also been arrested twice the previous month, according to cops.
The latest case unfolded Saturday near Sixth Avenue and West 41st Street, where investigators said Okon approached a 39-year-old woman who was pushing her young daughter in a stroller.
Without warning, police said, he allegedly threw a cellphone that struck the baby’s arm as she sat in the stroller. He then retrieved the device and threw it toward the mother, but missed, authorities said.
Okon was arrested at the scene and was awaiting arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court as of late Sunday afternoon, police said.
The troubling attack comes after another homeless maniac slashed five people at Penn Station during a random attack, and in May, a homeless man with 22 prior arrests beat and choked another vagrant to death in the Bronx after he was woken from a nap.
