A Texas woman in town to view the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade described, in an interview with the Daily News, her harrowing encounter in Manhattan with the homeless man accused in the unprovoked attack on an NYU student.
Jana Brazell was with her sister-in-law on Fifth Ave. near E. 47th St. in Midtown when James Rizzo, 45, attacked her around 8:40 p.m. on Thanksgiving evening, cops said.
Rizzo struck Brazell with his elbow, causing her to slam into a wall, said police.
A Houston resident, Brazell told The News she was in town to visit family and watch the world-famous Thanksgiving parade when Rizzo set his sights on her.
“We were walking along the street when out of nowhere he just jumped in my face,” she said. “He was shouting, ‘Our whole society is just a f—ing joke! Isn’t it?’
“He kept saying it over and over,” Brazell said. “He said it at least four times.”
The Texan said she was trying to get away from Rizzo when he suddenly attacked.
“He took just a step back, and I thought he was leaving,” she said. “The next thing I know, I was slammed face-first into a plate-glass window.“
The attack left Brazell with a jagged laceration on her forehead requiring six stitches and some nasty bruises. Her love of New York City, however, remains untarnished, she said.
“It’s a fabulous city, but this guy needs to go away,” said Brazell.
Rizzo was arrested Tuesday after NYU student Amelia Lewis shared surveillance footage on social media that she said showed the suspect attacking her as she walked to class in Greenwich Village Monday morning.
Police tracked the suspect using a stolen laptop to a vacant penthouse apartment near Washington Square, where they found him in possession of clothing and electronics stolen from four other apartments in the building, a prosecutor with the Manhattan DA’s office said at his arraignment late Wednesday.
POOL / Curtis Means
James Rizzo is arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on Wednesday. (POOL / Curtis Means)
Following his arrest for the attack on Lewis, investigators connected Rizzo to the Thanksgiving attack on Brazell, and he was charged with that crime as well.
Rizzo, who faces two counts of felony assault, in addition to forcible touching and persistent sexual abuse for the attacks against Lewis and Brazell, has three felony convictions, two of which are for violent crimes, and has a history of parole violations, the prosecutor said.
Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Jeffrey Gershuny ordered Rizzo held without bail.
Lewis, 20, was on Broadway when Rizzo ran up and struck her from behind near Waverly Place in Greenwich Village around 9:20 a.m., cops said. The creep then flung the young woman to the pavement by her hair, before fleeing.
“As I’m walking with my headphones on listening to music, I feel something slap me so hard on my ass. So hard,” Lewis said in a video posted to TikTok on Monday.
“Right when I turned around, he grabbed my f—ing hair like this and yanked me and threw me to the ground. My headphones went f—ing flying. I was on the ground, and I just saw him bolting down Waverly.”
The student described the assault as “the scariest experience of my life.”
“I just really want to emphasize how not OK this is. I am a student at NYU,” Lewis said in another video posted to X. “I should not be scared to be walking the street to go to my 9:30 a.m. class. These people are disgusting, and they should not be able to walk around the street freely targeting girls.”
