The homeless man accused of slashing costume designer Megan Berg during an unprovoked Soho street attack tried to kill his younger brother more than two decades ago by setting their Maryland home on fire, documents acquired by the Daily News show.
An unhinged and rambling Muslim Brunson was found agitated and cursing his mother when he was arrested for setting the sofa where his brother slept on fire inside their Baltimore apartment on June 11, 2002. He was also accused of lighting two upstairs bedrooms ablaze, officials said at the time.
“He tried to kill me officer!” Brunson’s younger brother Dawud Brunson told responding police after he escaped the flames during the 1:30 p.m. blaze, according to police reports filed at the time.
As the fire raged and smoke poured out of the windows, Brunson, then 23, was seen walking down the street shirtless.
When a neighbor approached, encouraging him to call his mother, he screamed “F— her!” documents show.
Brunson was charged with attempted murder and arson and committed to a psychiatric institution.
Twenty-two years later, he’s once again in jail — this time after slicing Bergs neck with a jagged broken bottle so deeply during an unprovoked attack in Soho that his victim’s muscles and veins were left exposed, police said.
“I’m going to kill a b—-!” Brunson, now 46, is accused of screaming during the April 7 attack before he slashed Berg, a 25-year-old theater costume designer who’d been scouting boutiques to buy clothing and fabrics for an upcoming project.
Medics rushed Berg to Bellevue Hospital, where she needed “life-saving surgery,” was treated for extensive blood loss and needed between 30 and 40 stitches to close the gaping wound, Manhattan prosecutors said as they charged Brunson with attempted murder, assault and attempted assault.
A spokeswoman for Berg and her family didn’t return a call for comment. When reached, Mae’s husband Tyler said she was “doing OK.”
At Brunson’s arraignment on April 9, defense attorney Mildred Morillo of NYC Defenders said he was in throes of a mental health crisis during the attack.
Mental illness was also the reason why he set the fire that nearly killed his brother, his mother told Baltimore police in 2002.
Once the blaze was put out, investigators determined that Brunson used a book of matches to set fire to the bedding inside the two upstairs bedrooms. He then went downstairs and used the matches to set fire to the couch.
“When (he) woke up, his brother was lighting the couch on fire near his head,” Baltimore police said at the time after interviewing Dawud Brunson. “He jumped up and realized there were also fires in the upstairs bedrooms. He retrieved his shoes and a T-shirt and exited the house.”
At the time, Dawud thought his older brother “got angry since there was no food in the house for him to eat,” cops said. “He told us that his brother is being treated by a doctor for a mental illness.”
Muslim Brunson gave “rambling statements” and denied setting the fire, claiming that his younger brother “must have fallen asleep with a cigarette and lit the bed on fire,” documents show.
“He must have dropped a cigarette or something,” he said.
When interviewers noted a burn on the middle finger of Brunson’s hand, he claimed he burned his hand lighting a cigarette on the stove then “gave differing stories of how he got burned, claiming that the burn was from three weeks prior,” officers said.
While Brunson was being questioned, his mother showed up telling police she had just received a petition for an emergency psychiatric evaluation for her son. His mother claimed Brunson was “seeing things through the TV, had violent behavior towards me and his brother (and was) saying he’s going to kill his girlfriend.”
“He was supposed to be taking medication for his (illness) but he stopped a week ago,” the petition read.
Brunson was also accused of kicking and destroying the front door of his apartment on Dec. 14, 2000, Baltimore police noted. After he was released from the mental institution, Brunson wended his way to New Jersey and North Carolina and finally to New York.
On April 7, Brunson allegedly threw a glass bottle at a 29-year-old woman near the corner of Broome and Wooster Streets. The bottle smashed against the back of the woman’s head.
He picked up the broken bottle and chased the woman down the block, prosecutors charge. During the chase, he stopped mid-course and zeroed in on Berg instead, who was scouting out boutiques for her boss when she was attacked, authorities say.
Brunson, who was wearing a hoodie emblazoned with the NYPD logo, was captured about six blocks away. He admitted to the attack and identified Berg as the second woman he attacked, prosecutors say.
He had been arrested in the city five prior times, dating back to 2019 when he robbed a 13-year-old boy of his cellphone at the Liberty Ave. station in Brooklyn. He’s also been repeatedly accused of assault and was accused of slamming an off-duty NYPD civilian employee’s head into a subway pole aboard a Brooklyn-bound No. 4 train near the Fulton St. station about 11 p.m. July 4, 2022, fracturing the victim’s cheekbone and an orbital bone. When cops arrested him two days later, he kicked one of the responding officers in the knee, officials said.
The robbery case was initially moved to mental health court. Brunson went on to make 36 appearances in the mental health court to update the judge on his progress in the program, which included attending therapy, according to a source, but he never finished the program.
He was ultimately convicted of the robbery and assault on the NYPD civilian employee. As required by state law, the sentences for both the Brooklyn and Manhattan cases were to be served concurrently and Brunson was sentenced to eight months in prison for both crimes, according to court records.
Over the last few years, the NYPD has responded to four calls for an emotionally disturbed person involving Brunson showing signs of extreme mental illness, sources said.
Brunson is now facing 25 years in prison if convicted of attacking Berg. While he awaits his next court date, a judge has ordered him to undergo a psychiatric exam, officials said.
Mayor Adams last week said he was “deeply disturbed” by the attack, claiming senseless violent acts like this are why the state should expand the ability to involuntarily commit people who appear to not be able to take care of themselves.
“Nothing shakes New Yorkers more than senseless and random acts of violence like this, and I have been clear that we must address the systemic failures in how we help people suffering from severe mental illness,” he said.
With Josephine Stratman