The violent vagrant arrested for attacking a 20-year-old NYU coed in an unprovoked attack Monday morning has a troubling history of cowardly assaults on women, The Post has learned.
James Rizzo, a 45-year-old homeless brute with 16 prior busts, including for sexual abuse and forcible touching — and even a 1997 murder rap — was charged Tuesday evening with shoving college student Amelia Lewis to the ground as she walked to class in Lower Manhattan on Monday morning.
Suspect James Rizzo is a career criminal with a history of sexually assaulting women and was once arrested for murder in 1997. Storyful
The serial creep was slapped with persistent sexual abuse, forcible touching and assault charges for the random attack on the 20-year-old, cops said.
Rizzo was connected to the crime after cops “caught him in the act” of burglarizing an apartment near Washington Square Park on Tuesday, police said.
He was also charged with four burglaries allegedly committed in the same building — three of which happened as residents inside were sleeping, according to cops.
Rizzo was released from state prison in September after being sentenced to two years behind bars on a persistent sexual abuse conviction, online correction records show.
He was back on the streets around 9:30 a.m. Monday, when he allegedly ran up behind Lewis, smacked her buttocks, grabbed her hair and threw her to the ground before running off.
NYU student Amelia Lewis discussed details of Rizzo’s attack on her in a social media post following the horrific event. @AmeliaLewi33832
“I just really want to emphasize how not ok this is,” the victim said in a tearful online video post after the attack. “I’m honestly still in shock, but I’m more enraged that things like this are able to happen in this city, and we really need to do something about it because this is unacceptable.”
Rizzo’s lengthy rap sheet includes charges that he grabbed a 33-year-old woman’s breasts on Green Street in Manhattan on Dec. 27, 2023, snapping at the woman, “Oh, you want more?”, according to law enforcement sources.
Additional reporting by Steven Vago