Young women keep being punched on the streets of New York

A number of young women in New York have reported being punched in the face while walking around the city (often in broad daylight), and after their sharing their stories publicly, are beginning to suspect that the culprit is the same man. 

TikTok user Halley Kate (@halleykate) said in a video, on the verge of tears, “you guys, I was literally just walking and a man came up and punched me in the face, and now this giant goose-egg is forming.”

In a separate video, @mikayla described her experience: as she was leaving class, and while she was looking at her phone, a man walked up to her on the street and hit her in the face. “I’m actually in shock right now,” she said.

“I’m trying not to cry but I just realised I was part of a group of women that got punched. I have so many goosebumps because I’m so shook that this happened,” said Selena Pikanab on TikTok (@pikapikanab).  Before work, she went to NoHo – an area in downtown Manhattan – to buy a water bottle as a birthday present for a friend. She claims that, while checking her GPS on her phone, a man approached her, said “excuse me”, and then punched her. 

Posting on Instagram, stand-up comedian Sarah Suzuki Harvard – who was also punched in the back of the head by an unknown assailant – collected several of these TikToks together and suggested the attacks were the work of the same man. “It seems like they all got attacked in downtown Manhattan in the Lower East Side/ East Village/ Union Square area,” she wrote.

“I haven’t filed a police report because I thought it was an isolated incident and that the police wouldn’t do much, but now that it seems like a recurring incident, I’ll be filing a police report,” her post continued.

Stay safe out there!