Shocking video captures the moment a convicted sex offender delivered a brutal knockout punch that left a Bronx restaurant patron with a fractured skull and a brain bleed.
The 52-year-old victim – shown carrying a backpack – was leaving the Fuego Tipico Restaurant on East 188th Street near the Grand Concourse in Fordham Manor around 10:45 p.m. Friday when he stopped near a group of people chatting outside, cops said.
He was followed out by a balding man wearing a black T-shirt.
Footage released early Wednesday shows the man putting on what appear to be work gloves before slugging the victim from behind, causing him to fall onto the sidewalk and hit his head.
Cops later arrested Van Phu Bui, a 55-year-old parolee, and charged him with attempted murder, police said.
Bui was convicted of first-degree sex abuse in the Bronx in 1995 and was sentenced to six years to life in prison, according to state records. He was paroled in 2019 and is now registered as a Level 3 sex offender — the most serious designation — for sexually abusing the 17-year-old girl in 1994, according to state records.
Bui was also charged with criminal possession of a weapon and robbery in the city back in the 1990s, police sources said.
The two men did not know each other and there did not appear to be any interaction prior to the attack, cops said.
But after the assault, the suspect appears to say something to the group gathered on the sidewalk, the video shows.
He then went back into the restaurant before fleeing the scene, cops said.
Responding officers found the victim unconscious and unresponsive on the ground with trauma to his head.
EMS rushed him to Jacobi Medical Center, where he was treated for a skull fracture, broken cheekbone and bleeding in the brain, authorities said.
He is listed in critical but stable condition, police said.
