A 59-year old man with seven prior felony convictions was picked up by police on Monday for allegedly robbing a Jewish boy from a large Orthodox family of his e-scooter on July 7 in the Borough Park area of Brooklyn, New York.
The child was robbed as he was playing on the scooter near his home that evening.
The scooter belonged to the boy’s older brother who has special needs.
The thief walked up to the boy – asking him “Where is your mommy?” – and then pushed him off the e-scooter, grabbed it and rode off.
The boy ran to his older sister and told her what happened. Their parents called the NYPD.
The family has 15 children. The father had purchased the scooter for $500 three weeks earlier for the boy’s older special-needs brother, who was away at summer camp.
At the time of the theft, the father said that when his son returned from camp, he was expecting to have to replace the scooter but didn't have the money.
Days later, NYPD officers presented the boy with a new scooter for his seventh birthday.
On Monday, Daniel Ufares, 59, was arrested at his home in Bushwick, Brooklyn, according to the New York Daily News.
The suspect is being called a “heartless thief” by local media for robbing a young boy.
He was arraigned on Tuesday on felony charges, including second degree attempted robbery, third degree robbery, fourth-degree grand larceny, and two misdemeanors, petit larceny and third-degree menacing, reported Hamodia.
Prosecutors said that when Ufares was arrested he told the police, “I just seen the kid with the scooter. I ask him where his mommy and daddy is. He got off and I took the scooter and left … I sold it to a person for $100.”
The NYPD identified Ufares by uploading surveillance video of the robbery through their facial recognition technology, reported the Daily News.
He was seen on video approaching the boy as he was riding his scooter down 12th Avenue in Borough Park at night. He grabs the scooter from him and rides away.
Ulfares reportedly used the $100 he made selling the scooter to buy drugs.
Ufares has a lengthy past criminal record, including serving prison stints for robbery, drug dealing and parole violations, including most recently robbing $4,230 from a bank in DeWitt, New York, for which he served nine years of a prison sentence, reported the New York Post.
He was still on supervised release when he robbed the boy.
He has also been arrested twice since he was released from jail for stealing food from grocery stores.
The boy’s father, Rabbi Pinchas Rotenberg, told Hamodia on Monday that his son is still traumatized by the incident but was doing somewhat better until he heard about the man being arrested.
“He was really scared in the days after the robbery,” Rabbi Rotenberg said. “It got a little better last week, but today, when the news came out of the arrest, he’s scared again. He’s asking, ‘Are they going to let the man out? Is he going to come after me?'”