Bully’s victim speaks: Cops should have ‘never taken the cuffs off’ of his 7-year-old tormentor
Seth Acevedo reveals months of torment at the hands and feet of Wilson Reyes
The purported victim of a tiny Bronx thug wishes the NYPD kept his 7-year-old tormentor permanently handcuffed.
Elementary schooler Seth Acevedo told the Daily News that he only felt safe from Wilson Reyes after the cruel third-grader was busted last month for beating and robbing him.
“Wilson was the worst bully,” said Seth, 9, in an interview Wednesday with the Daily News. “He would call me names. He would punch and kick me. I wish they never took the cuffs off of him.”
A lawyer for the Reyes family is considering a $250 million lawsuit against the city and the NYPD, claiming the boy was wrongfully handcuffed and held for six hours inside the 44th Precinct stationhouse.
But Seth and his mom unmasked Wilson as a serial bully — and said the arresting officers did the right thing by slapping restraints on their small suspect.
“I would have handcuffed him, too,” snapped the boy’s mother, Janet Ramos.
The 4-foot-7, 75-pound Wilson slugged Seth in the face and robbed him of $5 as he walked home after school on Nov. 30, the victim recounted.
Wilson was arrested four days later inside a classroom at Public School X114 on Cromwell Ave. and handcuffed to a Bronx stationhouse wall.
“He deserved to be cuffed,” Seth said. “He acts like an animal. . . . People are trying to say, poor Wilson, but he’s nothing but a big bully.”
Wilson’s purported accomplice confirmed Seth’s account of the street robbery.
Wilson grabbed a dollar bill from Seth’s pocket, sending a few more bills tumbling to the ground, said Javonne McLeod, 9. Wilson then stomped his foot down on the cash.
“Wilson said, ‘Let’s fight for the money,’ ” Javonne told The News. “I was like, ‘Stop, stop stop!’ I said, ‘You know, we can go to jail for that.’
“He’s like, ‘Nah — we’re too little to go to jail.’ ”
Wilson’s attorney Jack Yankowitz insisted Wednesday that his young client was the real victim.
“The child did absolutely nothing wrong,” Yankowitz said. “He did not take any money from any child. . . . The arrest was a complete violation of his civil rights, of his human rights.”
But Janet Ramos recalled how her crying son returned home that day: “He said, ‘Mommy, I just got robbed.’ ”
The mom said she notified the school about Wilson’s bullying.
School officials said they could not comment because the case is under investigation, but a school source confirmed that officials met with the students and their parents to resolve the situation.
The NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau launched an investigation into the decision to cuff the kid suspect.
Attorney Ron Kuby said that regardless of what the police find, the Reyes family will never collect anything near $250 million — but “no lawyer ever lost a case by adding too many zeroes to a damage request.”
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