HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — The homeless man accused of attacking a television star outside her home in Hollywood last week is a former Pickens County resident who had been out of contact with family for more than decade, according to his brother.

David Merck, 45, pleaded not guilty to felony criminal threats and imprisonment by violence during a preliminary arraignment hearing Monday in connection with an alleged attack on “NCIS” actress Pauley Perrette.

Merck, who grew up in Six Mile and still has relatives in the area, has not been seen by family members in at least 15 years, his brother, Dean Merck, told The Courier on Tuesday.

Merck is being held on $100,000 bail and faces up to four years in prison if convicted, according to reports.

Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Bob Ward told reporters Merck has a lengthy criminal history.

The case drew international headlines after Perrette, who plays forensic scientist Abby Sciuto on the hit CBS show, issued a post on Twitter shortly before 4:30 a.m. on Friday.

“Tonight was an awful night,” Perrette wrote.

The 46-year-old actress said she was walking across the street near her home when she “was jumped by a VERY psychotic homeless man.”

Perrette said the man grabbed her, pinned her arm and punched her in the nose and forehead, threatening her life.

“Then he showed me how he was going to kill me,” she wrote.

Perrette claimed the man told her repeatedly that his name was William.

“I prayed my heart out an (sic) then finally said, ‘William is a beautiful name, I have a little nephew named William,’” she wrote.

She said the man started to punch her again, then told her to “get the —- out of here.”

Perrette said she collapsed on the sidewalk, where a man on his phone walked past her, before contacting friends and drawing a sketch of the man, who she said left headed toward Hollywood Boulevard “with murder in his eyes.”

She said a friend took a picture of her sketch, found Merck and watched him until police came and arrested him.

“I am shaken and traumatized,” wrote Perrette, an advocate for civil rights and the homeless.

“My life changed tonight,” she later wrote, adding that full mental health care, housing and help for the homeless and support for police are all needed. “We need to not walk alone. I need to heal.”

Perrette, who according to LAPD spokesman Ricardo Hernandez complained of pain and redness in her nose area, finished her Twitter statement with four dramatic words — “I almost died tonight.”