Another person, unwittingly, was the victim of an attack on the New York City subway – but the elderly woman targeted by a group of four teenagers last week didn’t give up without a fight.
Linda Rosa, a 71-year-old retired Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) employee, was on her way to a New Year’s Eve church service when a gang of would-be attackers accosted at the Hoyt Street station in Brooklyn, the New York Post reported Friday.
One of the teens, all of whom were female, first reached out to grab Rosa’s purse, she told the outlet.
“And then I was like, ‘Oh, no, that’s not going to happen today,'” the woman said.
A second teen then rushed to Rosa’s bag and asked, “Oh, do you want to fight?”
Even after hearing this threat, Rosa refused to let go of her belongings and was attacked.
“The first person continued to fight,” she recalled. “She hit me in the face, I have my glasses on and I have a cut on my nose. When she hit me in the face, my glasses flew to the ground.
“Meanwhile, the other young lady was still trying to distract me to get my wallet or get into my purse, to grab something out of my purse,” Rosa said.
One of the girls managed to grab a pouch containing the victim’s ID card and medical records before Rosa found herself on the ground.
“I was always struggling with the first person,” Rosa explained. “Then I tried to kick him between his legs, but my leg didn’t stretch far enough, so I think that’s when I fell. I fell, then she stomped on me.
It was the critical moment when the 42-year MTA veteran knew she had to do everything she could to fight back.
“I had the feeling inside me that she was going to stomp on me again, but she was going to aim for my head,” she told the Job. “So I stood up right away, and with that, I grabbed her braids and wrapped them around my right hand, then pulled her down. She had her head down.
When one of the other teenagers asked Rosa to release her accomplice, she recalled saying, “Oh, no, I’m not letting her go.” »
Then the teen who grabbed her pouch threw the stolen item to the ground and charged at Rosa.
“So, out of nowhere, I grabbed her hair and wrapped it around my left hand,” the tough woman explained. “So I have them both face down… (like) battering rams when they’re getting ready to fight.”
As the other girls shouted, “Let them go!” » Rosa screamed for help.
She finally released the two girls’ hair moments later, and the four teens ran away.
Rosa collected her belongings that had been thrown out and went to the nearby Brooklyn Tabernacle Church, where staff called the police.
Rosa was then taken to Brooklyn Hospital Center for treatment, but thanked God that she did not suffer serious injuries.
“Thank God they didn’t have guns,” she told the outlet. “I thank God I didn’t have a heart attack or stroke and die!”
Although she says she “forgives” the girls because “they don’t know what they’re doing,” the New York Police Department released security footage of the suspects passing through the station turnstiles in the hope of stopping them:
“They don’t know what they did. They’re just teenagers acting stupid,” Rosa said, before adding that it’s increasingly common to become targets of crime in New York.
“This could happen to anyone. We are now seeing elderly people being attacked. Anywhere – it can happen anywhere, any station. You could walk down the street. You could cross the street.
This incident could have ended in a tragedy similar to several other recent incidents on the city’s subway, including that of a woman burned alive in a horrific arson attack believed to have been carried out by an illegal immigrant, and a man left in critical condition after being brutally pushed in front of an oncoming train.
Despite these recent events, New York MTA Chairman Janno Lieber said in a recent interview with NBC that “digitally, we’ve made a lot of progress” in subway safety and crime, and that in the “Together, it’s a safe place, but we have to fight the disorder and the people who commit these serious, high-profile crimes.
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