{"id":7579,"date":"2024-04-06T12:27:45","date_gmt":"2024-04-06T16:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/?p=7579"},"modified":"2024-04-05T12:28:18","modified_gmt":"2024-04-05T16:28:18","slug":"nyc-women-randomly-face-punched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/?p=7579","title":{"rendered":"NYC Women Randomly Face-Punched"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lola Karimi ’25
\nEE\u00a0<\/em>Co-Managing Editor<\/p>\n

On March 17, a new line of harassment had just started what is now taking over the streets of New York City- sucker punching?<\/span><\/p>\n

Luckily, victims have taken to social media platforms such as TikTok to share details of their broadly similar attacks. Women in their 20\u2019s and 30\u2019s seem to be the main targets of harassment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Due to the quick spread of information via social media, identifying a perpetrator has become a search for everyone, not just the police. There have been videos of the men walking away after attacks taken from third party perspectives, as well as from the victims themselves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou guys, I was literally just walking, and a man came up and punched me in the face,\u201d Halley Kate Mgookin, a New York-based fashion influences said in a March 25 video posted to TikTok that has since been viewed 49 million times. Commenters on Mcgookin\u2019s post began tagging other women who had reported similar attacks, including Olivia Brand, a New York woman who described being punched by a stranger in a video posted on March 17. \u201cI literally just got punched by some man on the sidewalk,\u201d Brand said in the video. \u201cHe goes, \u2018sorry\u2019, and then punches me in the head.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mikayla Toninato, a 27-year-old student at the Parsons School of Design, saw Mcgookin\u2019s video and replied \u201c<\/span>@Halley<\/span> i quite literally feel your pain this was so insane.\u201d Toninato <\/span>in a video said<\/span><\/a> she was leaving class and while looking down at her phone when \u201cout of nowhere, a man came up and hit me in the face.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sarah Harvard, who was attacked March 19, didn\u2019t post about her experience at first, assuming it was an isolated incident. The 30-year-old comedian was headed toward the Delancey St. F train on the Lower East Side before a comedy show that night when she was suddenly punched in the back of the head. \u201cI was walking, no AirPods, not looking at my phone, and it took me by surprise,\u201d Harvard told The Post. She recalled immediately thinking she had just experienced a <\/span>needle spiking attack <\/span><\/a>or that she had been stabbed. She turned behind her and didn\u2019t see anyone. When she turned back around, she saw a man, tall, clad in denim and with bleached dreadlocks, running away in the direction she had been walking.<\/span><\/p>\n

She made jokes about the incident, but others around her at her performance shortly after recalled seeing her shaking uncontrollably. She didn\u2019t think it would ever happen again, that it was a one-off thing, but after seeing videos start to go viral, Harvard filed a police report on March 27. She also took to social media platforms herself, such as X, and detailed her experience of the attack to warn others of the dangers women are facing lately.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At least two other women, online content creator Selena Pikanab and model Karina Dunford, posted videos describing similar incidents. A seventh woman, only identified by her TikTok handle, posted a video describing a similar attack before making her account private.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the NYPD continues to investigate this pattern of unsystematic attacks, a 40-year-old Brooklyn man, Skiboky Stora, has been arrested for allegedly randomly punching the woman on Seventh Avenue near 17th street.\u00a0 In the past two weeks, there have been over a dozen reported incidents and six arrests. Two other suspects have also been identified along with Stora.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stora appeared in court for three separate unrelated cases, making clear his history of violence and his previous arrests. When asked if he punched the victim, he responded with \u201cI\u2019m running for Mayor\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, since Wednesday, there have been other attacks that did not directly include Storia as he is in police custody. They have yet to prove any confirmed correlation between the viral outrages of violence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In my opinion though, the biggest concern is the lack of it. Comments on TikTok posts made by men relay the message that it is time to learn \u201csome social awareness\u201d and some even doubt that these incidents are real. There have even been comments made about this entire ordeal being a media stunt.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stay safe ladies, and don\u2019t be afraid to punch back.<\/span><\/p>\n

Photo Credit: The Independent (US Version)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lola Karimi ’25 EE\u00a0Co-Managing Editor On March 17, a new line of harassment had just started what is now taking over the streets of New York City- sucker punching? Luckily, victims have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":7585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-opinions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7579"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7586,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7579\/revisions\/7586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}