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Man Allegedly Goes on Broken Bottle Rampage in Washington Square Park

By DNAinfo Staff on June 10, 2011 5:22pm  | Updated on June 11, 2011 8:48am

By Jill Colvin

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MIDTOWN — A man wielding a broken bottle allegedly went on the attack in Washington Square Park Thursday afternoon, sending another man to the hospital, officials said.

Charles Graham, 51, of Brooklyn, allegedly stabbed two people with the bottle after an apparent argument in the park just before 1 p.m., police said.

But the FDNY only had reports of one person being injured. One of his alleged unidentified victims was rushed to Bellevue Hospital for lacerations to his arm, an FDNY spokesman said.

A park-goer shot a video of the aftermath, with what appeared to be Parks Department security officers leading a tall man dressed in a tan T-shirt and blue jeans toward the park’s iconic arch.

There he was handed over to a group of NYPD officers, who surrounded him and handcuffed him, according to an eyewitness video of the arrest posted on YouTube.

The video later shows a shirtless man in a while baseball cap approaching the man in custody and apparently taunting him.

Kimberly Couzens, 25, who lives on the Upper East Side, said she was in the park reading Thursday when she noticed a parks vehicle zooming through the middle of the square in the heat.

She said she heard from some eyewitnesses that two men had been stabbed and that there had been a chase as police tried to apprehend the perp.

"I can’t believe it," said Couzens after learning the details of the alleged attack. "It's scary to think someone might up and stab you while you're relaxing in the park."

Fox News Channel correspondent Laura Ingle was also in the park during the alleged stabbing.

"Nothing like a stabbing to interrupt a day of doing live shots at George Washington Square park," she tweeted, along with an image of the man in the video pinned against the back of a police car while apparently being searched by police.

Graham was arrested on two counts of assault and one court of criminal possession of a weapon, police said.

He is currently awaiting arraignment.