Birthday chaos.
A Florida man said he was celebrating his birthday when he vandalized a New York City taxi amid the massive street celebrations that followed the Knicks’ dramatic Game 4 NBA Finals comeback in Manhattan.
Saul Vargas accepted a plea agreement Thursday on a disorderly conduct charge. Video showed Vargas, shirtless, climbing onto the hood and roof of a yellow cab before breaking its windshield as thousands of jubilant Knicks fans poured into the streets near Madison Square Garden on June 11.
“I just want to be 21,” Vargas said while leaving a Manhattan courtroom, according to the Daily Mail.
“At the end of the day, I’m 21. I was being a kid, I was being stupid,” he said, acknowledging that his birthday was no defense for the damage. “It was my birthday, I was trying to have fun but that’s not a good excuse.”
Vargas also expressed remorse toward the cab driver, Noueddine Bitat, whose vehicle was targeted during the post-game mayhem.
“To the taxi driver, I do apologize. It’s something no driver should have to go through,” Vargas said.
Bitat, 59, was traveling along Seventh Avenue near West 36th Street at about 12:30 a.m. when a crowd swarmed his cab, pulled him from the vehicle and attacked it.
“The crowd came and they attacked him. They grabbed him out of the cab. They grabbed him by the neck. Someone punched him in his head,” Bitat said through a translator at the time.
“They shattered the windshield. They opened the front doors and even the trunks. They were yelling, ‘Knicks in five! Knicks in five!’”
Vargas, of St. Cloud, Fla., joined other rowdy fans on the car for the celebration — including a man wearing a keffiyeh and another holding a Palestinian flag, perched atop the destroyed cab.
Bitat suffered a diabetic attack and was left with “a lot of trauma.”
Bitat, who is from Algeria, said he was not planning on returning to the chauffeur gig following the beatdown and was “lucky to be alive.”
“It’s just that from what happened, he couldn’t believe doing a job like this could be so risky.”
Vargas was ordered to pay $500 in restitution as part of his plea deal.
The Knickerbockers, who went on to win the NBA Finals in Game 5 two nights later, had erased a record 29-point deficit in the closing minutes of the game to ignite the mass celebration.
Game hero OG Anunoby sent the city into a frenzy with his tip-in with 1.2 seconds left, rebounding a missed three from Finals MVP Jalen Brunson.
Police sought Vargas on a criminal mischief charge after video of the incident of the incident went viral.
The alleged birthday boy later turned himself over to police just before heading back to Florida after learning he was a wanted man.
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