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Assault Suspect Arrested For 3rd Time Within Hours After Another Release

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A homeless man was facing new charges Sunday after being accused in a string of violent attacks.

Eugene Webb, 26, was re-arrested Friday just hours after he was released from jail under the state's new bail reform law, CBS2's Tara Jakeway reported.

Webb was arraigned late Saturday night after three separate incidents on New York City Streets.

Questions about the new bail reform laws were being raised after he was released following the first two incidents, both of them violent and one leaving a young woman with missing teeth.

"Once I crossed McDougal I got pushed from the side and then attacked again and I was punched in the head," said a 23-year-old woman who was allegedly assaulted by Webb as she walked to her workout class on Wednesday morning. "I tried to start running away and then while that happened I was pushed to the ground... then I was screaming for help and trying to say 'Stop.'"

Too shaken to show her face, the woman recounted how the accused approached her on the street in Greenwich Village and hit her so hard she lost some of her teeth.

eugenewebb
Eugene Webb (Credit: CBS2)

Later that day, police said the same man attacked a 35-year-old woman by Grand Central Terminal, shoving her to the ground and kicking her in the back of the head. He was picked up for those two attacks Thursday but then released after his arraignment Friday.

Mere hours later he was arrested again for aggressive panhandling just feet from the scene of his first attack. Police found a glass pipe in his possession containing what investigators believed to be K2.

Many point to the new bail reform laws that allow for offenders to be released without bail, free to strike again, laws that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has publicly supported.

"Justice was never supposed to be who has money in their pocket and who doesn't," Cuomo said last week.

Cuomo has acknowledged the law is not foolproof.

"There's no doubt this is still a work in progress and there are other changes that have to be made," Cuomo said.

On Sunday, former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton became the latest critic to slam the new laws.

"It's a mess. It's more than a mess -- it's a disgrace in terms of what they put forth. As the public learns more about it, as the public is affected more by the negative aspects of it, I think the outrage will build and hopefully they will reform the reforms," Bratton said during a radio interview.

Webb was not released after his most recent arrest. Instead, a judge decided to send him to the hospital for evaluation.

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