Violent vagrant ‘Ice Pick Nick’ with 37 busts who terrorized East Village for years finally jailed: ‘System is failing us all’
NY Post
A wildman known as “Ice Pick Nick” who has been terrorizing the East Village for years has finally been arrested and jailed.
Just before 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, neighborhood tormentor Nicholas Babilonia Jr. menaced a person on Avenue C with what appeared to be a firearm, before throwing the victim’s bicycle, according to criminal courts records.
The unhinged vagrant, who boasts a rap sheet 37 arrests long, then grabbed a metal pipe and swung at his target, narrowly missing him, the complaint said.
The violent and mentally ill vagrant was charged with second-degree attempted assault, a felony, and menacing, and held on $20,000 bail, records show.
But the fact that Babilonia has managed to repeatedly assault and harass people along the block for years illustrates just how broken the city’s revolving-door system of dealing with the violent mentally ill is, according to outraged experts and locals.
“The system is just broken, they can’t decide what to do with him,” retired NYPD detective and John Jay College adjunct professor Michael Alcazar told The Post.
