The homeless ex-con accused of randomly assaulting an NYU student on her way to class committed an eerily similar attack just days earlier in Manhattan, cops said Wednesday.

James Rizzo, 45 — who has 16 prior busts on his rap sheet — allegedly shoved a 68-year-old woman as she walked on Fifth Avenue near West 47th Street around 8:45 p.m. in an unprovoked Thanksgiving Day attack, police said.

The disturbed career criminal allegedly struck the victim with his elbow without warning, hitting her so violently that she tumbled to the ground and suffered a cut, cops said.

Jana Dianne Brazell, a retired college professor from Texas visiting her sister-in-law in the Big Apple, told The Post they had just left the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade when she was attacked.

“I was about a step or two behind her and out of nowhere this guy appears in my face and starts talking crazy talk, like, ‘Our whole society is a f—ing joke, right?’” Brazell recalled.

“He stepped back,” she said. “I thought, thank goodness he’s moving away. The next thing I know, I’m flying in the air and I hit this glass wall at the side of a building. I just slid down.

“This whole encounter with him was like six seconds,” she said. “It was so fast.”

The unhinged perp’s spree continued Monday morning, when he allegedly came up behind 20-year-old Big Apple coed Amelia Lewis on Broadway near Astor Place, slapped her head and buttocks and pulled her hair in a shocking attack, police said.

He was charged Tuesday with assault in both incidents, including persistent sexual abuse and forcible touching for the attack on Lewis — and with a burglary just hours later.

“I just really want to emphasize how not OK this is,” Lewis said of the assault on X. “I’m honestly still in shock, but I’m more enraged that things like this are able to happen in this city, and we really need to do something about it because this is unacceptable.”

He was also slapped with another assault charge for allegedly slapping a 59-year-old woman in the face at random on Dec. 18, 2023, on Mercer Street near West 3rd Street, authorities said.

The suspect, who got out of prison in September, was tied to the crimes after cops “caught him in the act” burglarizing an apartment near Washington Square Park on Tuesday, police said.

Police connected Rizzo to four burglaries committed in the same building at Bleecker and Mercer streets, all from around 1 a.m. Tuesday, cops said.

The theft victims included a 28-year-old man who woke up to find that his suitcase and backpack were missing, another man, 29, had his backpack, three laptops and headphones stolen and a 58-year-old woman who had $3,150 in items taken, according to police.

A fourth victim, a 58-year-old man, reported having his yoga mat and a water container stolen from the building, cops said.

Investigators tracked one of the missing laptops and discovered it was still inside the building.

The laptop tracker led them straight to Rizzo, who was “alone in a vacant penthouse surrounded by the items that were stolen,” Assistant District Attorney Kaley Wilk revealed at his arraignment late Wednesday night.

Some of the repeat offender’s victims said they are just happy they didn’t suffer worse fates.

“I just feel very lucky,” Brazell, the woman attacked on Thanksgiving, said Wednesday. “Very lucky that he didn’t have a weapon or that it didn’t happen in the subway station and throw me on the tracks.”

Despite the horror, she said the ordeal hasn’t soured her on visiting the Big Apple in the future.

“This was a random event by one mentally ill person,” she said. “It could have happened in Houston. It could have happened to anyone, anywhere.”

During his Wednesday night arraignment at Manhattan Criminal Court, Rizzo’s defense attorney requested that he be sprung on supervised release, arguing the career criminal had long suffered from housing instability and mental illness after being kicked out of his parents’ home when he was just 15 years old.

His parole officer also noted that the last time Rizzo checked in with him was on Oct. 23, and that he failed to do another required check-in a few days later.

“We could not find Mr. Rizzo until he was arrested yesterday,” he said.

Rizzo was ordered held without bail by Judge Jeffrey Gershuny, who also requested that he receive medical attention and a psychological evaluation.

He will return to court in the Bronx on Thursday for his parole violations and will be back in Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday.

Additional reporting by Marie Pohl.