Mother takes down suspect who punched her four-year-old son in the head in New York’s Times Square

The man drank an entire bottle of hand sanitiser when he was in custody at the Bellevue Hospital

Rafaela Rivera (right) tackled a man who allegedly punched her four-year-old son Angel (left) in the head in Times Square on 17 February 2022 (ABC7)

Police have arrested the man who allegedly attacked and punched a four-year-old boy in his head at the Time Square, prompting the boy’s mother to rush and save him.

The child, Angel Rivera, was walking at the Square with his mother and sister when a 34-year-old man hit him with a closed fist on Thursday around 3.20pm.

His mother Rafaela Rivera said she had taken her kids to Times Square for a photo shoot, and heard a loud smack shortly after they wrapped it up.

"I heard a smack like somebody got hit in the head with a bottle. I turn around and the baby is screaming, hollering and crying," Ms Rivera told ABC7.

Her daughter and Angel’s sister Carmen said she noticed the accused man Babacar Mbaye walking really close to people in the crowd.

The loud smack from the spot was heard from Mr Mbaye’s swing at the child with a closed fist that struck him in the head, reported Fox News.

On seeing this, Ms Rivera rushed to confront the man.

She said she was grabbing toward him, telling him, ‘Hey, you just hit my son," the report added.

Ms Rivera said she grabbed him harder, and “we both went down”.

She was holding the man down when the police officers arrived at the spot.

They arrested Mr Mbaye and charged him with felony assault, reckless endangerment and resisting arrest.

He also kicked one of the police officers after police took him into custody, The New York Post reported.

The accused also drank an entire bottle of hand sanitiser when he was in custody at Bellevue Hospital, prosecutors said, the report added.

According to the defence attorney, Mr Mbaye was “under the influence of an intoxicated, debilitating psychiatric episode” and never intended to harm the child.

The accused was dancing in the midst of Times Square, attorney Thomas Kenniff said, adding that it was at this time when he made contact with the child which “drew the ire of the child’s mother who maybe perhaps reasonably believed that he intended to strike the child”.

“But I’m confident that was not his intention,” Mr Kenniff said.

The man is now being held on $30,000 (£ 22,007) bail money and is scheduled for a court hearing on 23 February.