On Sunday, the masked vigilante tourist targeting Spider-Man was arrested after he allegedly punched a mom in Times Square because she wouldn't tip him after he posed in a photo with her two kids. But in court this week, 35-year-old Philip Williams had a slightly different account of the events: he claims that the 44-year-old mom struck him with a snowball, and he was just defending himself. If this is the case, then the mom should just be glad she got this Spider-Man, and not the trained boxing one below.
According to prosecutors, the mom told Williams, "Sorry I don't have any [money]," to which he responded, "You're crap." That's when the stories diverge: prosecutors say WIlliams then punched her in the face unprovoked, while his attorney claims the mom physically attacked him first (with the snowball). After the woman went to get her husband, she initially confronted the wrong Spider-Man: “A woman came to me and said, ‘What did you do to me, you f--ker?’ ” another Times Square Spidey told the Post. “Her husband came over and said it was a different Spider-Man. They went over to the other one and started fighting.”
Williams, who has prior arrests for grand larceny and and retail fraud bust when he was 17 and living in Michigan, has been charged with assault and harassment. Even worse, he's bringing shame onto the costumed Times Square community that already has had to deal with an allegedly gropey Super Mario and a very foul mouthed Elmo: “Getting arrested isn’t good for any of us,” said Times Square worker Christian, who dresses as Big Bird. “It makes us all look bad.”
