The crazed brute accused of a savage assault on an off-duty NYPD sergeant was ordered held without bail after his arraignment Monday on an attempted murder charge.
Suspect Hayden Holder, 29, a Queens mechanic, faced a sea of uniformed and plainclothes cops who ringed the courtroom in a show of support for Sgt. Mohammed Deen.
A prosecutor said the veteran cop was in guarded condition after the attack early Sunday outside a Queens diner — that was captured on a sickening cell-phone video — where Holder allegedly kicked and punched Deen repeatedly before slamming his head on the pavement, which was covered with broken glass.
Holder, wearing a hospital gown tucked into blue sweatpants, said nothing during the proceeding, glancing back at one point at his mother and stepfather, who were seated in the gallery in Queens Criminal Court.
His right hand and forearm were heavily bandaged from an injury he suffered when he fell onto the downed cop during the assault, prosecutors said.
At the request of defense lawyer Andrew Worgan, Judge Suzanne Melendez placed Holder on suicide watch.
The gut-wrenching cell-phone video shows Deen getting knocked to the ground and repeatedly kicked and punched by a hulking brute as he lays prone, seemingly unconscious. No one comes to his aid.
At one point, the video shows the attacker leaving Deen crumpled on the pavement as he tries in a rage to smash in the windows of the NYPD veteran’s nearby white BMW 535i — with Deen’s horrified wife locked inside, a police source said.
When the perp can’t break the glass, the video — which was posted to Facebook — shows him returning to his motionless victim, smashing his head against the street and pummeling him some more.
“It was a vicious, savage beating,’’ one stunned law-enforcement source said.
Deen — who had earlier exchanged words with Holder at a Queens nightclub — suffered critical injuries including brain hemorrhage and was in a medically induced coma at Jamaica Hospital.
Holder was busted as he tried to run away from the South Richmond Hill scene.
He glared at reporters but said nothing Sunday evening as cops took him from the 106th Precinct — dressed in a hospital gown from treatment for an injury to his hand — to court.
Sources said Holder confessed to the attack but did not know that Deen was a cop at the time.
He has previous arrests for criminal possession of stolen property, pot possession and graffiti, sources said.
Deen is an 18-year NYPD veteran who’s currently assigned to the 32nd Precinct in Harlem.
The ugly incident unfolded around 5:30 a.m. outside the St. John’s Express restaurant on Liberty Avenue, which serves take-out food through a window in its storefront.
A source said the two men had gotten into an argument earlier inside the Maracas lounge on Jamaica Avenue about a mile away.
It was unclear what sparked the initial confrontation, but Facebook user “Errol Johnson,” who posted the video, wrote underneath: “Just left the club in queens n—a get knocked out for bumping another man. MUST WATCH THIS I caught it all worldstar.”
Whoever shot the video was apparently laughing throughout the incident — and repeatedly saying “That n—a’s dead!” — while other onlookers screamed in terror.
Holder’s former neighbors in the Richmond Hill section of Queens described him as a troublemaker who frequently got into arguments and threatened people.
Mienkoemar Panchu, 45, said Holder often drank bottles of Corona and Heineken beer and tossed the empties into the street.
“He gets more hyper when he’s drunk,” Panchu said. “Everybody used to keep a distance on the block.”
Republished with permission of The New York Post.
