Yet another unwitting person was made victim to a New York City subway attack — but the elderly woman that a group of four teens targeted last week did not give up without a fight.
Linda Rosa, a 71-year-old retired Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) worker, was on her way to a New Year’s Day church service when a gang of would-be muggers accosted her at the Hoyt Street station in Brooklyn, the New York Post reported Friday.
One of the teens, who were all female, first reached out to grab Rosa’s purse, she recounted to the outlet.
“And then I [said to myself], ‘Oh, no, this is not going to happen today,’” the woman said.
A second teen then lunged for Rosa’s bag, and asked, “Oh, you want to fight?”
Even after hearing that threat, Rosa refused to let go of her belongings — and was assaulted.
“The first person kept fighting,” she recalled. “She punched me in my face and I have my glasses on, and I have a cut on my nose. When she punched me in my face, my glasses flew to the floor.”
“Meanwhile the other young lady was still trying to distract me to get my pocketbook or go into my purse, to snatch something out of my purse,” Rosa said.
One of the girls was able to grab a pocket pouch that contained the victim’s ID and medical records before Rosa ended up on the floor.
“I was still wrestling with the first person,” Rosa explained. “Then I was trying to kick her in between her legs, but my leg wouldn’t stretch far enough, so I believe that’s when I fell. I fell, and then she stomped on me.”
That was the critical moment when the 42-year MTA veteran knew she had to do everything she could to fight back.
“I got an impression in me that she was going to stomp me again, but she was going to aim towards my head,” she told the Post. “So I got up right away, and with that, I grabbed her braids and twirled them around my right hand, and then I pulled her down. She had her head down.”
When one of the other teens demanded that Rosa release her accomplice, she recalled saying, “Oh, no, I’m not letting her go.”
Then, the teen who grabbed her pocket pouch tossed the stolen item to the ground and charged at Rosa.
“So out of nowhere, I grabbed her hair and twisted it around my left hand,” the tough woman explained. “So I had them both facedown….[like] rams when they’re getting ready to fight.”
As the other girls screamed, “Let them go!” Rosa yelled for help.
She eventually released both girls’ hair a few moments later, and the four teens ran away.
Rosa collected her belongings that had been tossed aside, and made it to the nearby Brooklyn Tabernacle Church, where staff called the police.
Rosa was then taken to the Brooklyn Hospital Center for treatment, but thanked God that she did not sustain serious injuries.
“Thank God they didn’t have no weapons,” she told the outlet. “I thank God I didn’t have a heart attack and a stroke and die!”
Even though she says she “forgives” the girls because “they do not know what they do,” the NYPD released security footage of the suspects passing through the turnstiles at the station in hopes of nabbing them:
“They don’t know what they did. It’s just teenagers acting foolish,” Rosa said, before adding that becoming a target of crime in New York City is becoming common.
“It could happen to anybody. Now we’re seeing seniors getting attacked. Anywhere – it can happen anywhere, any station. You could be walking down the street. You could be crossing the street.”
That incident could have ended in tragedy similar to several other recent incidents on the city’s subway, including a woman being burned to death in a horrific arson attack allegedly committed by an illegal immigrant, and a man being left in critical condition after being brutally shoved in front of an oncoming train.
Despite these recent events, New York MTA Chair Janno Lieber stated in a recent interview with NBC that “numerically, we’ve made a lot of progress” on safety and crime on the subway, and it is overall “a safe place, but we have to push back against the disorder and the people who commit these serious, high-profile crimes.”