He keeps the school free of dirt — and dirtbags.
A janitor at a Bronx elementary school, armed with only a broom handle, saved a 6-year-old boy from a would-be kidnapper who tried to snatch him.
“You could see he had bad intentions, especially in his eyes — his eyes were bulging out of his head,” John Vazquez, 34, said of the man who tried to grab first-grader Raddy Larry.
Vazquez said Raddy, who always gets to school early, arrived at PS 160 in Co-op City at about 7 a.m. last Friday, nearly an hour before the doors opened.
“In the morning he’s always following me, asking, ‘Mr. John, what are you working on?’ ”
That day, after their usual greeting, Vazquez turned back around and saw a man next to the boy.
“He got down on one knee and grabbed the child’s hand,” Vazquez recalled.
“I walked over and asked, ‘Do you know this boy?’ and he said, ‘Go f–k yourself. I’m his uncle.’ ”
Vazquez, the father of a 9-year-old son, didn’t buy it.
He asked Raddy if it was true, and when the boy denied knowing the man, the quick-thinking maintenance worker sprang into action.
“There was a standoff,’’ he said.
“I pulled the boy behind me and had a broom handle in my right hand. He kept cursing, but I could see he wasn’t going to mess with us,” Vazquez told The Post yesterday.
The janitor, who has worked at the school for four years, took Raddy’s hand and escorted him to a security guard in the school.
The suspect, whom teachers had seen lurking around the school, walked away.
Police are still searching for the man, described as black, in his 50s, about 6-foot-2 with a salt-and-pepper beard.
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“He’s going to go to jail, he’s done,” said criminal-defense lawyer Arthur Aidala, who is not affiliated with the case.
