92-Year-Old Woman Brutally Knocked to the Ground in Broad Daylight
A 92-year-old woman was pushed to the ground by a random young man walking by her in Manhattan last week.
Surveillance video footage obtained by the New York Post shows the elderly woman walking with a pushcart at 3:30 p.m. on Friday along Third Avenue in the Gramercy Park neighborhood.
The man was walking toward her in the opposite direction when he suddenly hit the woman’s head with his left hand.
The woman fell to the ground, barely missing hitting a fire hydrant with the back of her head.
The man walked on as if nothing happened, looking back a couple of times to see the woman on the ground.
A man on the sidewalk behind the woman appeared to freeze in disbelief when the woman fell.
The elderly woman is expected to recover from her injuries, the Post reported.
The suspect was apprehended Tuesday morning after New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea asked the community for help identifying him. It remains unclear what his motive was.
Thanks to the outstanding work of @NYPDDetectives, @NYPD25Pct officers, & the help of the community, this suspect has been apprehended. https://t.co/bJlgTL3Tja
— Commissioner Shea (@NYPDShea) June 16, 2020
The incident resembles a trend called the “knockout game” where people walked up to strangers and punched them in the face.
In October 2017, a woman in Pittsburgh was knocked out on a busy sidewalk, but passersby didn’t help her or call 911, KDKA-TV reported.
ICYMI: HORRIFIC: A #Pittsburgh woman knocked out cold on a busy sidewalk. Instead of getting help, groups of men come by and take videos of her, rob her, even take selfies. Meanwhile NOBODY CALLED 911. KDKA-TV EXCLUSIVE: https://t.co/kQSQqrO7Vu pic.twitter.com/w9F21IAwyW
— KDKA (@KDKA) October 27, 2017
A 43-year-old man was punched near a Shake Shack in New York City in a separate October 2017 incident where his attacker took a selfie with his victim, the New York Post reported.
“There is no point to it, it’s crazy,” Charisma Jano-Baptiste told the Post at the time.
A Shake Shack employee added, “Yeah, I’m scared. What if I’m next?”
There were more “knockout” attacks in 2013 in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., according to Fox News.
In New York, one man died after a teenage boy punched him so hard it caused bleeding in his brain.
UPDATE, June 16, 2020: On June 16, New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea tweeted that the suspect who hit the elderly woman had been apprehended. We have updated this article to include Shea’s tweets on the matter.
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