A judge who reads The Post threw the book at the MySpace mugging suspect featured on yesterday’s front page.
Victor Hernandez, 16, was hit with $20,000 bail by Brooklyn Judge Shari Michels after being charged with a slew of crimes from assault to menacing and harassment to criminal possession of a weapon and robbery.
“It is an extreme amount to set for bail,” said Hernandez’s lawyer, Alan Stutman, after the hearing, where Michels had a copy of yesterday’s Post on the bench.
Hernandez had not posted bail by last night, and the teen had no family members in court.
Prosecutors charge that Hernandez and his pals had been on a wilding spree before he was tracked down by a teen after he stole her cellphone.
Yudelka Polanco gathered pictures of Hernandez and information about the suspect and presented her file to cops – after his e-mail address appeared on her replacement phone following her mugging. She plugged the address into MySpace and found his page.
But stealing Polanco’s cell on Jan. 26 in Williamsburg was just the first crime with which Hernandez was charged.
On Jan. 30, prosecutors say, the youth was part of a gang who harassed two brothers working at a Williamsburg restaurant after hours, slashing them with machetes and beating them with canes.
In another case, Hernandez on Feb. 17 allegedly chased a man into a Bushwick store, then threw a bottle at a glass pane that shattered, causing cuts that required 84 stitches around the victim’s eye, prosecutors charged.
Then, at 4:30 p.m. Monday, the same day he was arrested in the cellphone theft, Hernandez and his gang allegedly chased two young men into the subway before lashing them with canes and snatching their bookbags, prosecutors said.
As Stutman pressed Judge Michael for bail leniency, he pleaded, “This is his first arrest, he’s 16 and goes to Franklin K. Lane High School.”
Polanco said she was relieved by the high bail, but concerned about her safety – saying she didn’t know of Hernandez’s violent record until reading about it in the paper.
“Thank God nothing bad happened to me,” she said. “I don’t want to bring trouble to me because they know who I am. I just hope he gets what he deserves.”
At her school yesterday, Polanco said she was something of a celebrity.
“I was getting recognized a lot,” she said. “People were saying, ‘Oh you’re that girl in the paper, that’s cool how you got the guy and were able to turn him in to the cops.’ “