This “boarding-school bandit” is in for a real schooling.
A wealthy teen gangster wannabe from the suburbs was busted early yesterday for a string of terrifying robberies using a realistic-looking rubber gun in Central Park, police said.
New Rochelle resident Jesse Wasserman, 17, whose mother is a renowned psychologist, allegedly pretended to be lost when he stopped victims Wednesday night and asked for directions to East 79th Street.
The one-time student at the elite, $42,500-a-year Vermont Academy then pulled the fake gun while an accomplice stripped them of cash and valuables, cops said.
“I was riding my bicycle on East Drive around 11:35 at night. Two guys approached me and asked for directions,” recalled victim Saul Fuentes, 50.
“One of them pulled out a gun and said, ‘Drop your bike and give me your money.’ I didn’t have any money so I dropped my bike and ran,” he said.
That same night, cops said, Wasserman and a partner robbed a 19-year-old near East 84th Street of his wallet and cellphone.
They also allegedly robbed a 35-year-old near East 81st Street of his backpack, cellphone, credit cards and jewelry.
Cops caught Wasserman and 19-year-old Driton Rexhaj, of Horatio Street in Greenwich Village, at around 1 a.m. The rubber gun was recovered.
Rexhaj was released yesterday because the victims were unable to ID him.
“I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Rexhaj said.
Wasserman was charged with robbery. His lawyer, Norman Steiner, called reporters “disgusting” for asking about his client.
A former Vermont Academy classmate, Dylan Comerford, said Wasserman “is a stuck-up rich boy who had everything going for him and thought he lived a different life. He thought he was cool.
“Jesse had this vision of himself that he was a gangsta from Harlem, when actually, he was from a rich part of New York.”
In January, Wasserman was expelled from the school in Saxtons River, Vt., said his former football coach, Michael Atkins.
“He had trouble living within the school rules,” Atkins said.
“He was not on a scholarship. [His] mom is a doctor so he paid his own way.”
The suspect’s mother, Stacy Berrin-Wasserman, has a Ph.D. in neuropsychology and is an expert in attention-deficit disorder. No one answered the door at the family’s $1.75 million home,
Additional reporting by Kevin Fasick, Sarah Makuta, Ikimulisa Livingston, Perry Chiaramonte, Doug Auer and Philip Messing