A woman is seen on surveillance video being grabbed and attacked by a man after he followed her home from a Brooklyn subway station, according to police, in an incident that the victim said has left her afraid to use the subway alone.
The 28-year-old woman, an international student from Venezuela studying English in New York City, said in an exclusive interview with NBC New York that she was heading home to her apartment in Sunset Park after having dinner with friends in Manhattan Friday night. She said she walked out of the R train station at 45th Street and 4th Avenue just before 6 a.m. Saturday, when a man started following her.
"Never thinking that somebody come behind me, never thinking somebody can follow me (to) make something terrible," said the victim, who did not want to be identified. "I turned my face and I see the guy behind. For me, it was a shock."
Police said that the man followed her back to her apartment building, with security footage showing him grab the victim, before she fought back.
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"In this moment I was thinking, 'I have to fight him for my life because this is my life, I want to live and I don't want to live with this trauma,'" she said. "This guy can use my body for pleasure because he is a psycho."
The victim said that the man made sexual comments toward her while pleasuring himself during the alleged attack, as he grabbed her by the neck and punched her repeatedly.
""My body, he punched I don't know how many times in the face. I don't remember how many times he blocked my hands, my fingers are broken right now," she said.
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The victim said she is now too scared to use the subway by herself now, and is not going back to her apartment. She wants the city to do more for women in the subway system, and said that her physical injuries — broken fingers and other wounds — don't compare to the psychological trauma she has endured in the aftermath of the alleged attack.
"I know that this guy is in the street right now, I know that he can make the same (thing) he tried to do with me, with other girls," she said.
The suspect has not yet been arrested.
