Homeless man dubbed a 'ticking time bomb' will rot in prison for 25 years after smashing six-year-old boy's head on a sidewalk and leaving him with critical injuries in unprovoked attack

• e-mail

A homeless man from Queens who was arrested in 2019 for smashing a six-year-old boy's head into the sidewalk has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.  

Laurance Gendreau, 35, was charged with assault in October 2019 and convicted by a jury last month. 

He was found guilty of attempted murder in the second degree, assault in the first degree, two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, grand larceny in the fourth degree and criminal possession of stolen property in the fifth degree.

At sentencing, District Attorney Katz said: 'The brutality displayed by this defendant toward an innocent child is heartbreaking. With this sentence, we have achieved justice for the young boy and his family and taken a dangerous man off our streets.'

Laurance Gendreau, 35, was charged with assault, acting in a manner injurious to a child younger than 17 and harassment in October 2019

A jury convicted him in September 2023 of attempted murder in the second degree, assault in the first degree, two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, grand larceny in the fourth degree and criminal possession of stolen property in the fifth degree

He has been sentenced to 25 years in prison on October 12, 2023

According to trial records, at 4.45pm, the six-year-old unidentified boy was waiting with his older brother outside their grandparents’ Kew Gardens home for a pizza delivery. 

Gendreau, who was walking by, suddenly charged the child, yelling at him. He lifted the boy over his head and slammed him onto the sidewalk head-first. 

The child's brother ran inside the grandparents’ house to alert his family while Gendreau fled. Naftali Portnoy, their grandfather, chased after him and flagged down a police officer.

Gendreau's history of violent criminality and mental illness made him a 'ticking time bomb' waiting to go off, police and court records showed

Naftali said: 'You heard that scream, you knew something serious was going on, it's a kid that was picked up and smashed to the ground, nothing less than that,' he said. 

'I was told that he picked him up in the air and threw him down into the ground and he banged his head fairly badly. He has two fractures in his skull and a collapsed lung.' 

'I don't wish that upon anybody. It's not normal,' the victim's father Yaakov Portnoy told WCBS-TV at the time of the incident. 

Earlier in the day, Gendreau had already approached an 83-year-old woman and snatched her iPad, which was later recovered when he was arrested for assault. 

Naftali Portnoy: 'You heard that scream, you knew something serious was going on, it's a kid that was picked up and smashed to the ground, nothing less than that'. The boy's father also spoke to the press as the community pray's for the child's recovery in 2019. 

Surveillance video shows the boy's grandfather following a shirtless Gendreau as he calls 911 and frantically requests police and ambulance

Authorities said Gendreau is 'emotionally disturbed' and his brother told the Post that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. 

His history of violent criminality and mental illness made him a 'ticking time bomb' waiting to go off, police and court records showed. 

At the time of the attack, he was wanted on an open warrant for skipping a court appearance after he assaulted a woman with a chair in a Manhattan Popeye's restaurant. 

He was charged with felony assault but prosecutors reduced the charge to a misdemeanor. 

Police records also show that Gendreau threatened to 'snap the neck' of a mental health worker several years ago.