A mask-wearing maniac who tried to grab a 2-year-old girl from her mother seethed, “That’s my baby!” while waving a knife at the terrified woman — who grabbed her toddler and ran for her life, she told The Post Saturday.
Cecilia Carias clutched her dark-haired little girl and wept as she recounted the frightening episode, which unfolded outside a laundromat near Atlantic Avenue and 109th Street in South Richmond Hill.
Carias, 30, was doing the wash and had brought the toddler into the nearly empty parking lot to play for a bit when a man in a sweatshirt approached on a purple bike.
“I saw a man approaching on a bicycle,” she recalled. “I found it strange because he was watching us too much. Then he approached. I thought he had clothes washing too, but no.”
Her daughter played with some leaves, and fell.
As she sat on the ground, Carias said, the stranger approached.
“‘OK baby?’” he said, according to the mother of three.
The interaction set off alarm bells for the mother of three, who grabbed her girl and started to go — and then got cornered by a knife.
“He cornered me and he ran into me and took out a knife and told me, ‘That’s my baby,’” she said. “He told me to give him the girl. He scared me.
blade-wielding creep was busted for trying to kidnap a 2-year-old girl in Queen. Obtained by the NY Post
“I screamed for someone to help me,” she told The Post. “I just screamed. … I pulled myself together despite the knife and my daughter and I started running and screaming. … I didn’t let go of her for one moment.”
A passing minivan stopped when the students who were onboard saw her running frantically with the child, she said.
The cops arrived a few minutes later.
“I couldn’t speak,” she said. “I could only scream and cry.”
Police told her they had already grabbed the man, later identified as Peter Vonderhofen, at a home nearby and took her to identify him.
“I said I couldn’t be sure of his face because he was wearing a mask and a hat covering his whole head so the only thing I could tell them is that he was carrying a small purple bicycle,” she said.
“The police continued looking in the house and suddenly they took a small purple bicycle … that’s what I recognized.”
Since the incident, her daughter has been clinging to her for dear life.
“She kept hugging me,” she said. “She didn’t want anyone to even talk to her. She was very scared. She would cry if someone walked up to her.”
The mom, who’s studying to be a nursing assistant, said she already suffered from panic attacks and sees a psychiatrist, and the attempted kidnapping has left her on edge.
“Actually, every person I see in the sweatshirt I feel that he keeps looking at me,” she said. “I feel like he’s going to hurt me.”
Vonderhofen, who is being held on $30,000 bail, was charged with attempted kidnapping, criminal possession of a weapon, acting in a manner injurious to a child under 17 and menacing.
He was also linked to two armed robberies that were carried out near the same intersection, police and sources said.
Carias wants him to go to jail forever.
“No one has the right to steal your child or your tranquility,” she said.
But the mom, who also has a 9-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son, said she will remain strong for her children.
“I know I don’t feel well now, but I know I have to face my fear,” she said. “My life has a goal and that is to raise my children and I will do it even if I’m scared to death.”
