A 24-year-old man accused of attacking four women, including one near the South Street Seaport, and an 85-year-old man the following day walked free after both arrests, according to one of his alleged victims. Christopher Tarrant was charged with misdemeanor assault after allegedly striking a 28-year-old woman on Fulton Street near Water Street in Lower Manhattan, then allegedly attacked two more women within five minutes, the woman said.
The 28-year-old victim told the New York Post she was struck on the shoulder after dodging a punch, and that she called police while following Tarrant down the street. She said she watched him throw a glass bottle at an older woman and punch another woman near the Seaport. Tarrant was arrested after the attacks on the three women, but a Manhattan judge released him the very next day. Two other women did not file complaints against him, the victim said, which an NYPD spokesman noted matters because police cannot take a crime complaint without a cooperating victim.
“This is the most insane story ever,” the woman told the outlet. The frustration in her account centers on how quickly Tarrant was back on the street — and what happened less than 24 hours later.
A Second Arrest, A Second Release
The day after his release, Tarrant allegedly attacked an 85-year-old man, according to the victim's account relayed to the Post. Because the alleged victim was over 65, Tarrant was charged with felony assault rather than a misdemeanor. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office said he allegedly kicked the elderly man in the legs until he fell, then punched him twice in the face.
Manhattan prosecutors asked for $25,000 cash bail or a $50,000 bond given the severity of the felony charge. Instead, Judge Jeffrey Gershuny placed Tarrant on supervised release. Gershuny's bail decisions in violent cases have drawn scrutiny. Last year, he freed 35-year-old Cornell Neilly on supervised release despite 34 prior arrests and an alleged string of five bank robberies between Aug. 16 and Sept. 13, 2025, even after prosecutors requested $50,000 cash bail or a $150,000 bond, per the Post's reporting.
Judge Faces His Own Discipline History
Gershuny's record has drawn outside scrutiny before. The state Commission on Judicial Conduct censured him in 2026 over an August 2025 incident in which he brought a firearm into a Brooklyn courtroom for what he called a “little experiment” testing a police officer's account of whether a gun could be detected inside a bag. The gun was by Gershuny's foot, while the bag held a stapler, according to Gothamist. The commission found he had deceived a police witness during the stunt. Gershuny had no prior disciplinary record and agreed to the censure rather than contest it, Gothamist reported. Separately, government records show he was first appointed as an interim Civil Court judge in March 2018 and has since served in Criminal Court, according to nyc.gov.
Retired NYPD detective Michael Alcazar, now an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told the Post that police could still investigate the attacks on the women who did not come forward, even without their cooperation. He also said judges should be held more accountable for their due diligence in weighing release decisions — a pointed comment given the pattern now attached to Gershuny's docket.
Felony Assaults Climbing Across Lower Manhattan
The numbers around the courthouse doors back up the unease. Felony assaults in the NYPD's 1st Precinct, which covers SoHo, Tribeca and Wall Street, rose 14% this year, with 151 recorded so far compared with 133 over the same period last year, according to NYPD data cited in the Post's reporting.
That local spike fits a citywide pattern. New York City recorded 14,802 felony assault complaints in the first half of 2026, up 0.4% from the same period a year earlier, according to Vital City. Felony assaults have now risen for six straight years and sit 48% above prepandemic levels, even as overall major crime fell 5.6% — with murder down 21%, burglary down 15.2%, robbery down 11.8% and car theft down nearly 10%, per the same analysis. Compared with 2019, Vital City found felony assault is still 48% higher and major crime overall remains 25.5% higher.
Against that backdrop, the 28-year-old victim said the fear of random street violence has become something New Yorkers now build into their daily routines. “We walk around and we expect to not feel like we're in danger all the time whether it's at night or during the day,” she said.
