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The homeless ex-inmate accused of assaulting actor Rick Moranis has randomly attacked strangers over the past six months, it was revealed during his arraignment on Sunday night.
Marquis Ventura, 35, was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court for assault for allegedly throwing Moranis to the ground in a random attack on October 1.
The suspect has been involved in a number of other seemingly random and unprovoked attacks – including just hours after he allegedly punched the ‘Honey I Shrunk The Kids’ actor.
On Sunday night, prosecutors said that following the infamous Upper West Side attack, Ventura later assaulted a Big Apple liquor store owner.
When “confronted with the store owner, the defendant threw the [champagne] bottle at the store owner and then he kept hitting him repeatedly over the head, ”Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Kelly Keating said during Ventura’s arraignment.
For this incident, Ventura was charged with assault and petty theft.
Then last August, Ventura allegedly assaulted a customer at another New York City store, prosecutors said. He has been charged with harassment and assault in this case.
“The defendant has now been charged with five separate assaults that occurred over a six-month period in 2020, all of which included unprovoked attacks on strangers during a global pandemic,” Keating said.
“The accused demonstrated in defiance of the rules of society and the rights of others,” said the prosecutor.
Ventura, who was arrested Saturday, was remanded in custody by Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Nicholas Moyne and ordered to undergo a psychiatric assessment.
Her lawyer, Autumn Levine, told the judge on Sunday night that her client suffers from schizophrenia.
“He was in the psychiatric ward in seven different states… diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, and was without his medication,” Levine said.
In addition to the three new assault indictments in Sunday night’s indictment, Ventura was arrested in October for allegedly hitting a straphanger in the West 4th Street subway station.
Another alleged attack on a straphanger in the Bronx last April led to another charge against Ventura.
Ventura is also expected to be extradited to Pennsylvania at some point on another charge.
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