Arrest Made in Multiple ‘Knockout’ Assaults

Law enforcement sources said a 20-year-old Long Island man is under arrest and is expect to be charged with up to 7 counts of ‘knockout’ assaults that date back to April of 2013.

Darryl Mitchell of Amityville is expected to be charged in the assaults of residents, at least two of them elderly, in the Babylon and Amityville areas of Long Island.

Darryl Jones says it came out of nowhere. A single, roundhouse punch to the face that left him stunned. And a gash above his eye that took seven stitches to close.

“It I wasn’t strong enough, I probably would’ve passed out,” Jones said.

He told Eyewitness News he was walking home from the grocery store at three in the afternoon when a young man came walking toward him.

“He was walking on the sidewalk and I moved out of the way just to step into the street and he stood in front of me holding up his hands and hit me in the face,” adds Jones.

Eyewitness News has learned exclusively tonight that Darryl Mitchell will be charged with half a dozen assaults that go back as far as April.

One of them, on the Long Island Rail Road platform in Amityville. Several others in Babylon and in his own neighborhood, in North Amityville.

Sources say the victims were as young as 17 and as old as 69. The most recent assault occurred in the last two weeks.

One victim told police, “He just started to punch me in the face multiple times for no reason. And then the black male started to kick me in my body and head. I blacked out a little and all I heard him saying was get off my block.”

Investigators say many of the attacks are strikingly-similar to the so-called “Knockout Assaults” in Brooklyn and elsewhere.

Darryl Jones says this latest arrest could not come soon enough.

“Right after he assulted me, the next day he assaulted someone else down the street and someone after that. The guy is a terror,” Jones says.