A deranged vagrant who allegedly slashed a worker at a Brooklyn dollar store and then tried to light his victim on fire was cut loose without bail — after just three days at Rikers Island.
Joaquin Hidalgo, 35, who already had open cases against him in three boroughs, was ordered held on $25,000 bail on felony assault, arson and robbery charges last week for the Feb. 17 attack at the Two 99-cent store in Bushwick — only to be released without bail by another judge Friday.
Hidalgo had been facing assault charges in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Staten Island when police said he flipped out at the Brooklyn discount store because he didn’t have enough money to pay for a stick of gum.
“You could not make this up if you tried,” a ticked-off law enforcement source told The Post.
“A judge sets bail as prosecutors ask in this incident, as they would in any sane world for a recidivist who uses a machete to pay for gum — only for another judge to overrule that, sending a maniac back into the community. It’s a literal game of 52-card pickup.”
Hidalgo has history of bizarre behavior. One menacing photo posted on his Facebook page shows him holding a knife near his throat as he stares straight into the camera.
According to police, he strolled into the discount store in Bushwick around 1 p.m. Feb. 17 and grabbed the gum.
When he couldn’t come up with the money to pay for it, he allegedly pulled out a knife and slashed an employee’s left hand, then doused the worker in lighter fluid.
He fled the store — setting a flag outside on fire on his way out — but was quickly picked up by cops at the nearby Chauncey Street subway station.
At his arraignment Wednesday, Judge Jung Park set Hidalgo’s bail at $25,000 in cash or a $50,000 bond, and he was sent off to Rikers Island, correction records show.
But he was back in court Friday, and, this time, Judge Masateru Marubashi, a former Bronx prosecutor, ordered that Hidalgo be released without bail while the case is pending.
According to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, the judge had no choice.
“Our detectives served subpoenas on the victim and witnesses in this case, but they informed [the investigators] that the defendant is their friend who works at the location, and they do not wish to cooperate with the prosecution again him,” a spokesman for the DA said in a statement to The Post on Monday.
“A search for video evidence did not find an angle that captured the incident,” the statement said. “Accordingly, we are unable to indict this case and, by law, the defendant had to be released.”
Hidalgo had previously remained free without bail despite his string of arrests — because the lesser assault charges he faced were not eligible for bail under the state’s bail reform laws.
Court records show that his most recent bust before the dollar-store attack occurred just several days earlier, when he was charged with assault, attempted assault and harassment for allegedly slugging another man inside the holding cells at the NYPD’s 73rd Precinct station house in Brooklyn.
He was at the precinct after getting busted the day before on charges of possession of a knife and disorderly conduct at an Ocean Hill subway station when a straphanger spotted him smoking in the transit system and carrying a blade more than 4 inches long, records show.
He was arraigned on both cases earlier this month and released without bail.
On Feb. 2, he was arrested in Manhattan on assault and harassment charges for an alleged attack on Halloween, during which he is accused of hitting a woman in the head with a bottle on Bradhurst Avenue in Harlem, a complaint in that case shows.
Manhattan prosecutors said they requested that Hidalgo be released under supervision in that case and asked for an order of protection to keep him away from the victim, both of which the judge approved.
Hidalgo was already facing assault, weapons and harassment charges in Staten Island for getting into a dispute on Tompkins Avenue on Nov. 11 and hitting the victim in the chest with “a silver hatchet with a brown handle,” according to a criminal complaint in that case.
Records show he was released without bail in that case as well, although a warrant was issued for his arrest after he blew off a Jan. 7 court appearance.
“Nothing is going to change or get better,” the law-enforcement source said of New York’s revolving-door justice system. “The courts are afraid to offend criminal-justice reformers, and they keep releasing perps.
“Everyone is kicking the can, and the public is suffering.”
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