A convicted murderer released on parole less than three months ago tried to kidnap an 8-year-old girl as her stepfather desperately pulled her away in a tug-of-war on a Bronx street this week, cops and the dad said.
Juan Rivera, 52 — who was only released from state prison in late August — “didn’t say a word” as he tried to pry the girl from her stepfather’s grip at Fox Street and St. John Avenue in the Woodstock neighborhood around 3:15 p.m. Wednesday, authorities said.
“He never said anything. He didn’t talk,” disturbed father Abraham Perez told The Post on Thursday. “Never said one single thing.”
Perez, a restaurant worker, had been walking the girl to buy snacks at the store after school at Girls Preparatory Charter School when he noticed a man staring and making a beeline toward them. When he tried to move out of the way, the man mirrored his movements, he said.
“He looked at my eyes. He looked very scary, very dangerous,” Perez, 38, said. “I tried to move but he kept walking straight towards me. He didn’t want to let us pass.”
Perez asked the man what the problem was but he didn’t answer and instead silently shoved the confused dad then pulled at the girl from her sweater collar.
“My daughter started screaming, saying ‘leave me alone, you don’t hurt my family, you don’t hurt my dad, please leave me alone,’” Perez said. “She was crying so loud, yelling, she was so scared.”
At one point, the man wrested the girl from Perez’s grip but she fought loose and grabbed her father’s arm again. Suddenly, the attacker let go and walked “slowly” toward Southern Boulevard as Perez flagged down a nearby NYPD cop car and the Rivera was arrested.
He was charged with kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment and harassment, authorities said.
“I f–ked up,” Rivera admitted, according to cops.
The attack has left the young girl terrified, Perez said.
“I don’t know if my daughter will ever be the same for the rest of her life,” he said. “Now my stepdaughter doesn’t even want to go outside, she’s afraid.”
“Her mother took her to school today and Maria didn’t want to let go of her mother’s hand. She was panicked,” he added. “She knows her school is very safe but she was not too confident. [She] was crying last night. She didn’t want to sleep alone.”
Rivera was last arrested on March 25, 2003, for fatally shooting a 33-year-old man in the Bronx, cops and police sources said.
He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life, state correction records show.
He was held in the Franklin Correctional Facility in Malone, New York, from July 22, 2005, through Aug. 25 of this year, when he was released on parole, records show.
Police say he was also arrested for attempted murder on Oct. 25, 1993.
But that charge does not appear in correction records, which show he was held in the Altona Correctional Facility from May 1995 through September 2001 on burglary and weapon possession raps.
Wednesday’s bust marks Rivera’s sixth unsealed arrest in the Big Apple, cops said.
His record also includes raps for weapon possession and narcotics use, police said. His first bust was in 1988.
“People like this, it’s no good for them to be on the streets. He’s not a good guy,” Perez said. “Someone like that should not be let out of prison. He hurt my daughter so bad. I don’t want this to happen to another family.”
The incident left people in the “usually quiet” neighborhood shaken.
“If the guy who tried to snatch the little girl had done his time in prison, but he wasn’t right in the head, he should have been released into a mental health facility instead of being allowed to walk the streets,” building super Eric Quinsonez said.
“The justice system is letting us down.”
Paula Sanchez, 85, who raised five children on the same block of the kidnapping called the situation “very frightening.”
“I’ve lived here for 64 years and I’ve never heard of anything like this happening,” Sanchez said. “My little grandchildren go to PS 62 [on Fox Street]. I have to worry something like this could have happened to them.”