Terrifying moment woman is choked, beaten and robbed in NYC’s Herald Square subway station

An unsuspecting 23-year-old woman waiting for a train in one of New York City‘s main transit hubs was grabbed from behind in a chokehold, thrown to the ground, punched in the face and robbed of her purse as subway crime has spiked 141 percent over the past week. 

The harrowing moment, which took place on Monday at 4am in Manhattan’s 34th Street Herald Square subway station, was captured on surveillance cameras and shared on Twitter by @ProgressiveActionTV on Wednesday. 

The mugger, who police have yet to identify, can be seen dragging the woman  along the northbound platform servicing the D, F, N and Q lines before throwing her to the ground. 

He then holds her down as he punches her in the head four times and snatches her purse, before briskly walking away. 

The woman can be seen sitting up, dazed, and getting to her feet before the surveillance video cuts off. 

New York City Crime Stoppers released a short clip of the unidentified man jumping a subway turnstile before the attack, and are offering a reward of $3,500 for information that leads to his arrest. 

After the incident, the victim was taken to Lenox Hill HealthPlex in Greenwich Village, according to ABC 7. 

The New York Police Department and Metropolitan Transit Authority have yet to respond to DailyMail.com’s inquiries regarding the woman’s condition.   

New York City has seen a surge in violent assaults on the subway, with a 45 percent increase in the past 28 days as compared to last year. In the past week, a 141 percent increase was also reported for transit crime. 

The latest attack comes after a 32-year-old soccer player was stabbed to death after he nodded off in a subway car at Penn Station on Sunday. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio weighed in on the rise in subway crime as the city swells with holiday travelers.

‘These individual incidents are very troubling,’ the lame-duck mayor said.

‘I understand they do give people pause, and our job has to be, constantly, to get out there, show presence, reassure people through action.’ 

Akeem Loney, 32, was stabbed in the neck at Penn Station at around 12.15am. Loney, who was homeless, had been lying down or napping on one of the subway seats when he had been attacked.  

He was taken by EMS to Bellevue Hospital where he died from his injuries an hour later.

His attacker was caught on surveillance footage but has yet to have been nabbed by police.  

Another attack was reported on Tuesday after a male victim was assaulted by two unidentified men around 1.50am on the 6 train at the 96th Street station on the Upper East Side.  

The MTA has said it has increased police presence in subway stations as well as security cameras.       

NYPD Police Commissioner Dermot Shea has also said that the department is working on keeping the stations safe as subway ridership beings to return to pre-pandemic levels transit.  

In October, there were 83.4 million riders in, with a reported 1.93 crimes per million riders. 

The NYPD recorded 40 robberies, 85 grand larcenies, and 34 assaults across the MTA’s subways last month.  

A 1.9 percent increase was also reported for overall crime as compared to November 2020.

Felony assaults spiked by 8.4 percent from last year, while robbery saw an increase if 2.9 percent and rape was up 1.9 percent. 

Overall crime was up 11.2 percent last month compared with October 2020. Robbery was up 15.8 percent and felony assault rose by 13.8 percent.

Meanwhile, gun violence in the borough has significantly increased, with 28 percent more shootings reported this year as compared to last, according to police data.

De Blasio this month blamed the courts for New York City’s skyrocketing crime numbers as he touted a small decrease in the murder rate while ignoring an 11 percent jump in overall crime over October 2020.  

‘In this city, real change is happening. We’ve got more to do for sure but real change is happening,’ de Blasio said in a press conference. ‘It’s about precision policing, it’s about neighborhood policing, these approaches work.’

De Blasio has defended ‘neighborhood policing’ and his decision to disband the plainclothes anti-crime unit, which has been involved in several highly-publicized police shootings.

‘Commissioner Shea, who has been at this work now for, you know, most of 30 years, he felt that the unit as constructed was not only creating a disconnect with communities, and ill will and some bad incidents,’ de Blasio said on WNYC’s ‘The Brian Lehrer Show.’

He continued: ‘He thought it was also not the best way to get guns off the street and the best way to have successful prosecutions. And he wanted more of those officers in uniform, same talented officers, doing the work a different way. That happened and gun arrests have gone up, up, up.’

However, Mayor-elect Eric Adams has pledged to bring back the unit.

‘That’s an indictment on us that we have to disband something because the people assigned aren’t doing their job. How about saying, ‘You’re going to do your job’? Because if that officer is abusive in a plainclothes assignment, he’s going to be abusive in uniform,’ said Adams, a former cop.

‘No police commissioner is going to tell you, you can’t police in the city without having some form of plainclothes unit,’ he added.  

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk

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