A deranged blue-haired brute went on a sick crime spree in Manhattan this week, groping four women — one of them blind — and lighting another unsuspecting victim’s hair on fire, police and prosecutors said.
Edwin Page — a 28-year-old from Harlem with at least 10 prior arrests and more than a dozen mental health outbursts, according to sources — is now charged with sex abuse, forcible touching and assault as a hate crime in the rash of broad-daylight attacks across Chelsea and Midtown South.
“He stands before the court charged with five separate incidents involving five different strangers,” Assistant District Attorney Shara Safer said in Manhattan Criminal Court Wednesday, adding the incidents were captured on surveillance video.
Edwin Page, 28, allegedly groped a 23-year-old woman after accosting her outside a Flatiron service center for the blind, cops said. Steven Hirsch The perv first horrifically targeted the 23-year-old blind woman on Friday morning at West 23rd Street near Seventh Avenue.
The victim was using a guide cane and waiting to enter a Flatiron service center around 8:10 a.m. when the creep came up to her and cruelly sneered, “Hey blind girl. I’m a detective. Can you see my badge? Of course not, you’re blind,” according to police.
He then grabbed her buttocks before walking off and returning a short time later, asking the victim, “Do you have the time?,” cops said.
Page allegedly continued his groping spree on Monday — randomly attacking four more women in just about two hours, according to police.
He first strolled up to a 27-year-old woman using her cellphone on West 32nd Street near Sixth Avenue around 12:10 p.m., authorities said.
“Do you want to know what it feels like to be my girlfriend?” the sicko allegedly asked, before pressing his genitals into her leg.
Just 15 minutes later, Page allegedly set his sights on a 37-year-old woman pushing a stroller near the same intersection, slapping her buttocks before running off, cops said.
He returned to Sixth Avenue and West 32nd Street around 12:50 p.m. and terrifyingly lit a woman’s hair on fire, cops said.
The woman was walking up the avenue when she smelled smoke and realized her locks were burning, according to police.
She managed to pat down her own hair and extinguish the flames before she was seriously hurt, cops said.
Page allegedly resurfaced around 2:15 p.m., barging into the QQ Nails and Spa on Sixth Avenue near West 26th Street, where he stormed up to a 29-year-old woman getting her nails done and grabbed her buttocks, cops said.
Page has a long rap sheet for domestic assault. Steven HirschThe unhinged vagrant was arrested Monday evening on a slew of charges in connection with the barrage of lewd and violent assaults, police said.
Most of Page’s prior busts are for domestic assaults in Queens, law enforcement sources said.
But his most recent arrest prior to this week was Feb. 26 in Midtown, when Page — who had orange hair at the time — was charged with third-degree assault for allegedly stalking a man and then attacking him in what prosecutors labeled a hate crime.
“Are you part of a Venezuelan gang?” Page asked the victim before throwing him to the ground on Eighth Avenue and choking him, the criminal complaint alleges.
He also has at least 18 previous incidents as an “emotionally disturbed person,” according to the sources.
Page — who was ordered held on $75,000 bail on Wednesday — was hauled to court sporting electric-blue-dyed hair and a black T-shirt depicting Al Pacino as Tony Montana in the 1983 film “Scarface” over a long-sleeved shirt the same color as his locks.
He replied “Good” when a photographer asked him how he’s doing, as an officer escorted him into the building.
But Page went off the rails during the hearing, griping that he was not busted at a homeless shelter, as prosecutors claimed.
Page was also busted for allegedly setting a woman’s hair on fire on Sixth Avenue near West 32nd Street in broad daylight Monday, cops said. Steven Hirsch “I was not apprehended at the shelter. I was not at the shelter when I was arrested,” he said. “Nobody believes anything I say. I’m being discriminated [against].”
State Assemblyman Tony Simone (D-Manhattan) said Page’s case was an example of the need for involuntary commitment mandates being discussed currently in Albany.
“These frightening and disgusting acts are the result of allowing severe mental illness to go untreated for far too long,” he said.
“Those who are a clear harm to themselves or others must be put into treatment, otherwise we will continue to see the same pattern.”
Curtis Sliwa, the Guardian Angels founder and presumptive Republican mayoral candidate, agreed.
“Edwin Page should have been committed long ago, but failed leadership and broken policies kept him on the streets,” he said.
— Additional reporting by Joe Marino, Vaughn Golden and Craig McCarthy
