The deranged vagrant charged with stabbing an off-Broadway costume designer with a broken bottle – leaving her fighting for her life — was “screaming he was going to kill a bitch” before the vicious assault, Manhattan prosecutors revealed Wednesday.
Muslim Brunson, 46, was ordered held without bail and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation as he was arraigned on attempted murder and assault charges, with his lawyer telling the judge the career criminal had only been back in the Big Apple for 60 days before he allegedly launched the senseless attack in Soho on Monday afternoon.
Brunson, who has a history of emotionally disturbing behavior in the five boroughs, was also hospitalized at a psych hospital in Baltimore in 2022, prosecutors said.
He is accused of slashing 25-year-old Megan Berg in the neck with a broken bottle in a random attack that has the young Arizona native clinging to life. She remained on a respirator at Bellevue Hospital Wednesday.
Police said Brunson first threw the bottle at another woman on a Soho street corner then picked up the pieces and attacked Berg, a costume designer for off-Broadway theater productions.
Brunson is a career criminal with a history of mental health issues and a string of arrests, including for a violent 2019 subway robbery of a 13-year-old boy in Brooklyn and a brutal attack on an off-duty NYPD civilian employee in 2022. That attack was so vicious that the victim suffered a fractured cheekbone and eye socket, according to reports.
The deranged vagrant served at least one stint in state prison and was once ordered into a mental health program that saw him undergo three dozen competency hearings, sources said.
Brunson’s history includes several encounters with authorities as an emotionally disturbed person, with at least three reports that he was hearing voices telling him to hurt others, the sources said.
His alleged attack on Berg was just the latest bust on his rap sheet.
Berg was “living her dream” as a costume designer on Big Apple musical productions, her father told The Post this week.
A graduate of the University of Arizona and Purdue University, she moved to New York several years ago to work in theater.
“Moving to New York City was her dream,” said her father, George Berg. “It’s just crazy. She’s still hanging on.”
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