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Woman pushed onto NYC subway tracks in unprovoked attack
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The woman who was shoved onto Brooklyn subway tracks this week told The Post on Thursday the unprovoked attack left her “traumatized” — and fearful of ever riding the rails solo again.
Maria Brown, 62, said her homeless assailant didn’t say a word before pushing her onto the tracks at Broadway Junction around 1:45 p.m. Tuesday.
“When I was walking in the middle area, there are some wooden benches,” Brown said by phone. “[The suspect] was standing there. He was putting on some green pants and a blue hoodie.”
“When I was passing him, he pushed me onto the tracks so hard [that] I was in shock,” she recalled. “I was traumatized.”
“He didn’t say anything to me — nothing,” she added. “He didn’t look at me. I felt his arms when he pushed me. He pushed me in the back. I’m like, ‘Why did you do this?”
Brown, of the Upper East Side, said she had gotten off the L train at Broadway Junction and wanted to transfer to a J train to visit her sister and nieces at Cleveland Avenue.
Transit District 33 cops are headquartered inside the station, but no officers were around the moment Brown was attacked, she said.
“All the cops were somewhere else,” she said. “There were none where I was when it happened. I’d say 10 or so of them came and then they started coming like flies.”
Brown suffered a deep cut to her leg and fortunately did not make contact with the train. She was taken to the hospital, where she received 35 to 40 stitches “from my ankle all the way up,” she said.
“I’m in pain right now,” Brown said. “I’m still in shock. I’m still thinking about, ‘Why did he do it?’ He is not supposed to push me or anybody. He is not supposed to do that.”
Brown believes her older age had something to do with why she was targeted.
“I’m 63, I’m not a young chicken,” she said. “They are picking on the elderly. That’s what they do. They pick on people that cannot defend themselves.”
The plucky victim says she wishes she could have fought back.
“If I didn’t see my cut, believe me, I would have whipped his butt, but I couldn’t because my leg was terrible,” she said.
The 22-year-old suspect, who was highly intoxicated, was taken into custody at the scene and charged with both felony and misdemeanor charges for assault with intent to cause serious injury and reckless endangerment, cops said.
He had no identification on him and would not provide his name, police said.
For now, Brown said she’ll be staying away from the trains unless she has a travel partner.
“I’m not taking the train alone — nope, not anymore. I can’t,” she said. “I’m traumatized taking the train — just looking at them … I’m going to stop. I’m scared. I’m very scared and I’m a person who takes the train all the time.”
“But now, I stay on my bus in Manhattan,” she said. “I got no business taking the train. Everywhere I go, it’s gonna be the bus. And if I have to take the train, I have to bring somebody with me. I’m not traveling by myself.”
She also bashed Mayor Bill de Blasio for downplaying the city’s recent spate of violence.
“Every time I look at the news, it’s somebody getting hurt, somebody getting punched or something,” she lamented. “Every day, every hour — cut, slice — come on, man. And they act like they crazy.”
“No! Lock them up,” the victim railed. “Give them to de Blasio, tell them to take them to de Blasio’s house — take them all, lock them up in there with him, being that he gives them so much power. He is the one that should be riding the train all the time, anytime, to see how he likes it.”
“Do something,” she continued. “At this point I’m mad. I’m very upset with him because he is saying it’s safe. It’s not safe. That’s a lie.”
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