The masked stranger who tried to snatch a 6-year-old Hasidic boy from his father’s arms in Brooklyn last weekend on video was arrested for terrorizing in broad daylight, police said.
Stephan Stowe, 28, a gangbanger with 33 previous arrests, was arrested early Sunday and charged with attempted kidnapping — just hours after he tried to snatch the young boy from his father in Crown Heights, authorities and sources said.
The boy’s father was holding hands with his two sons and walking along Kingston Avenue near Empire Boulevard when the threat approached the family and grabbed the boy around 3:30 p.m. Saturday, surveillance footage shows.
The lanky alleged kidnapper scooped the child into the air before the boy’s father quickly pulled him from the maniac’s arms.
The fast-acting father then punched the would-be kidnapper in the stomach.
A representative of Shomrim, a volunteer neighborhood patrol that serves New York’s Jewish community, said no words were exchanged between the attacker and his victims during the incident.
It is unclear why the man attacked the child.
Stowe — who was also charged with acting in a manner harmful to a child and intimidation — was ordered held without bail during his arraignment Monday night, city Department of Corrections records show.
He is a member of the G-Stone Crips gang, sources say.
Stowe’s lengthy criminal record includes two public arrests in Brooklyn, including one last August for strangling his girlfriend during a heated feud, according to a criminal complaint.
The couple had gotten into an argument over Stowe’s cell phone when he became “verbally and physically aggressive,” the court doc reveals.
The woman asked her abusive boyfriend to leave, but he refused, so she threw his belongings outside, the complaint said.
Stowe then kicked in the victim’s door, strangled her on top of her dresser and tried to lock her in the room, damaging a TV on the dresser during the skirmish, according to the judge.
Prosecutors hit him with the top charge of assault — a misdemeanor — and a string of misdemeanors and misdemeanors for criminal mischief, criminal trespass and intimidation.
He was released on his own recognizance during his arraignment, records show.
Stowe was also busted in April 2023 for possessing two handguns, a rifle, multiple rounds of ammunition, drugs, a credit card skimmer and a police radio in his apartment, according to a criminal complaint.
In that case, he was ordered held on $20,000 bail or $200,000 surety.
It was not immediately clear how or when he posted bail.
He was also arrested in 2019 for criminal possession of a weapon, sources said.
Twenty-five of his previous arrests have been sealed, sources said.
