“I was just walking, and a man came up and punched me in the face,” said Halley Kate Mcgookin, a 23-year-old. Mcgookin explained that she was walking along West 16th Street and Seventh Avenue on Monday when a man suddenly came up and punched her forehead. She fell to the ground and nearly blacked out. An influencer, Mcgookin, showed a bump on her forehead on TikTok.
Mikayla Toninato, a 27-year-old student at Parsons School of Design, was also punched in the face by a man over six feet tall on the corner of 14th Street and Fifth Avenue on Monday. “I didn’t see him coming at all. He knocked my head back so hard I just kind of like gasped and screamed,” Toninato told The New York Post.
Dozens of young women have revealed that they were also sucker-punched at random on the street in Manhattan. All victims were women and were attacked on the street in broad daylight.
Even celebrities were not exempt from this disturbing trend of attacks. Bethenny Frankel, an actress known for her role in Netflix’s hit reality show “Real Housewives,” shared her experience that she was hit by a man in the face while taking a video of a bakery with her smartphone. Comedian Sarah Suzuki Harvard also said that she was hit from behind in the Lower East Side on March 19.
With multiple reports coming in, the New York police made an announcement on X, saying that it is well aware of the random attacks on women and will strive efforts to make the streets safe again. The NYPD arrested Skikoby Stora, a 40-year-old, and charged him with assault over the assault of Halley Kate Mcgookin. The police also issued a wanted sign for a man who attacked women in Times Square.
Hyoun-Soo Kim kimhs@donga.com
