A stressed-out city sanitation worker who once pulled a gun on a teen and threatened to shoot a supervisor was busted for punching a cabby in East Harlem, cops said.
Everett Branch, 57 — who had been working 12-hour shifts to help with the snow backlog — allegedly socked the taxi driver in the mouth during an argument over Branch blocking the roadway with his garbage truck at Lexington Avenue and East 105th Street late Sunday.
Branch hopped back into his Sanitation Department truck and drove off, but the victim, Momodou Benteh Jallow, followed in his cab and called 911, cops said.
Both drivers stopped at East 112th Street and Third Avenue, where Branch was busted and charged with misdemeanor assault.
Jallow, 41, who had a cut on his lower lip, refused medical treatment, but on Monday told The Post that “my head still hurts” from the blow. He said Branch walloped him after he yelled at the man for blocking traffic while arguing with another driver.
“I roll down my window and say to him, ‘You can’t block traffic to beat someone up!’ He say, ‘You cabdrivers are all stupid motherf–kers!’ I say, ‘F–k you,’ ” recalled Jallow, an immigrant from Gambia, who added, “He punch me in my face so hard that I black out.
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Branch has 13 prior arrests dating back to 1985, with at least two after he was hired by the Sanitation Department in September 1995, law-enforcement sources said.
The majority is sealed, but his most recent previous bust, in 2006, resulted in a conviction for misdemeanor weapon possession and a sentence of three years’ probation after pulling a loaded, .38 caliber revolver and saying “I’ll kill you” during a dispute with a 15-year-old boy in Brownsville, sources said.
About two years prior to that, Branch threatened to shoot a Sanitation Department supervisor when they argued about Branch taking his paycheck out of a safe without permission, records show. An administrative law judge recommended Branch be suspended for 30 days in that case, noting that the threat “appeared more a product of his hotheaded nature than something genuinely intended.”
Branch, who didn’t return a phone message seeking comment, earned nearly $103,000 in salary and overtime last year. The Sanitation Department said he was slapped with a disciplinary complaint over his latest arrest.
Additional reporting by Kirstan Conley, Rebecca Harshbarger, Josh Saul and Frank Rosario