Creep in ‘Lilo & Stitch’ hoodie randomly punches NYC woman in another unprovoked attack: cops

A creep spotted in a “Lilo & Stitch” sweatshirt is wanted for randomly punching a stranger in the face near Union Square — part of a wave of unprovoked attacks on women, mostly in Lower Manhattan.

Stephanie Weng, 33, was walking on Union Square East near East 16th Street around 4:30 p.m. March 20 when police say the menace approached her from behind and socked her in the face.

“I really want this person found because I just feel super unsafe,” Weng, a Financial District resident, told The Post on Friday, describing the attack as “super unprompted” and “traumatizing.”

A surveillance photo released by the NYPD Friday shows the suspected assailant wearing a blue hoodie depicting the character Stitch from the Disney movie “Lilo & Stitch.”

Weng said after the sicko punched her, he muttered something under his breath, and as he walked away “he still stared at me – like he was waiting for me to do something about it, like to run after him or something.”

“But I think I was in total shock at that point,” she recalled in a phone interview.

Weng, who works in marketing and has lived in the Big Apple since 2008, was heading to an appointment when she was attacked. She said she raised her hands to block the blow, but the impact still left her with a bloody nose.

“I think he was really kind of intentional with his actions,” Weng said. “And it just was just like, super traumatizing and like very, very scary when it did happen. It’s really kind of hard for me to talk about.”

She said she immediately went into the building where she had her appointment and reported what happened to a man at the front desk – who spoke to his manager and ultimately managed to track down surveillance footage of the crime. She then filed a police report.

By then, the suspect had already fled north on Park Avenue, cops said.

Weng said she considers herself a “true New Yorker” but “this is like the only instance where… in more recent years I have been really kind of worried about going outside.

“And especially after this incident, I’m trying to stay indoors a bit more,” she said.

The NYPD said that the senseless crime did not appear to be part of a pattern – but it came as a surge of women have reported being randomly punched in the Big Apple.

Just hours earlier, a brute punched a woman in the face after he stumbled out of a Union Square McDonald’s, cops said this week.

In that incident, Ashley Cruz, 23, was walking on Sixth Avenue near West 14th Street around 10 a.m. March 20 when the attacker stepped out of the fast-food eatery and slugged her without warning, cops said.

“Nothing was said” before the man socked her in the face with an open fist, Cruz told The Post Wednesday night at her Bushwick, Brooklyn, home.

“It all happened so fast and I was in shock,” she said of the attack that has forced her to relearn how to feel safe in the only place she’s called home.

Other recent victims included Halley Kate, an influencer with 1.1 million followers on TikTok, who posted a video last week saying she was assaulted so viciously that she blacked out.

Skiboky Stora, 40, a criminal recidivist with an extensive criminal record, was busted in connection with the sucker punch, authorities said.

In another random assault last week, 57-year-old Brooklyn school bus aide Dulche Pichardo was slugged by an unhinged man — breaking her jaw and knocking out several of her teeth — as she walked home from work in Crown Heights, cops said.

Franz Jeudy, 33 — who has a rap sheet of similar sucker-punch attacks and a long history of mental illness — was slapped with misdemeanor charges of third-degree assault, attempted assault, and harassment in connection to the attack, according to a criminal complaint.

Despite the victim’s severe injuries, Jeudy was set free by a Brooklyn judge on supervised release because the offenses were not bail-eligible.

“I think it’s a very targeted issue, and I just feel totally unsafe right now and I think that as women, we have to be more vigilant and definitely just kind of be more aware of our surroundings,” Weng told The Post Friday.

“I just really hope that there’s a resolution and that this doesn’t [keep] happening.”

Weng argued that the criminal justice system needs to make “an example of these cases so that there’s less intention and potentially lesser crimes that would happen, especially for these circumstances where women are getting targeted.”

The revolving-door criminal justice system has also allowed the violence to continue, Weng said.

“Sometimes these people get caught and then they get released like a few days after that,” she said. “If people are not just, you know, released immediately after, then there’s kind of less incentive for people to do this again.”