A stranger snuck up to a 72-year-old woman on the Upper East Side last week and viscously dragged her to the ground during an attempted robbery, police said Wednesday.

The wannabe mugger set his sights on the woman as she was walking near the intersection of 2nd Avenue and East 83rd Street last Thursday around 3:30 a.m., the NYPD said.

The brute grabbed at the elderly woman’s purse, eventually dragging her to the ground, police said. 

As the two struggled over her purse, a witness approached the pair and the suspect ran off, leaving behind the woman’s bag and heading north on 3rd Avenue, police said. 

The woman was treated at the scene for bruising and swelling.

Cops said the suspect was still at large as of Wednesday afternoon.

The attempted mugging was the first of three random, unconnected attacks across New York last Thursday. 

A few hours later, a 67-year-old woman was struck on the back of the head with a rock by a man she told The Post seemed “mentally unstable.”

The suspect, who’s still on the loose, never spoke a word to his victim before he randomly clunked her on the head on a Chelsea sidewalk around 9 a.m., the woman said.

She was treated at a hospital for bruising and swelling, she told The Post.

That same day around 2:50 p.m., a tyrant in the Bronx bludgeoned a random passerby in the head with a baseball bat, police said. 

A 37-year-old man was walking down the sidewalk when the brute — apparently unprovoked — used the bat he was holding to repeatedly bash the stranger in the head, leaving the 37-year-old dazed, with cuts and bruising, police said.

The victim was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital in stable condition, police said. 

Police released a video of the suspect menacingly pacing the sidewalk holding the bat on Tuesday, but the man was still at large as of Wednesday afternoon.