Perhaps it is a coincidence, but several women have resorted to posting videos on social media to report, or warn, that they have been randomly beaten in broad daylight while walking through Manhattan.
There is also a recording from a surveillance camera, released by the New York police to try to identify the perpetrator of the attack, in which a woman is seen walking calmly down the sidewalk when suddenly a man comes out of a portal and smacks him. And good bye.
A 25-year-old woman reported on TikTok that last Saturday, when leaving the subway in Times Square, on 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue, an individual punched her in the head without a word being said between them, not even a glance. .
Out of surprise, he reacted and was able to capture the image of the aggressor as he fled. “It is a traumatic experience that I will carry with me for the rest of my life,” he said in his post. “We are always cautious when walking at night, now we will have to do it even during the day,” he said. “I have cried a lot,” she added.
Multiple videos, uploaded on TikTok or on X, have gained traction throughout these days, in which a series of women share their concerns about safety after suffering these attacks. One says that she was hit when she was walking home after attending a class, another that she was assaulted on the way to work, a third while she was walking her dog. And more.
The police reported that they had arrested an alleged aggressor, identified as Skiboky Stora, an old acquaintance of the uniformed men. The judge set bail at $10,000. Her alleged victim, Halley Kate Mcgookin, posted a post in which she told her audience that her attacker had been arrested.
She had previously done another in which, affected by nerves, she revealed her case. “Listen to me, I was literally walking, a man came and hit me in the face,” she said. “It hurts a lot,” she lamented.
The circulation of these videos on the networks has only amplified the psychosis and the perception that crimes are increasing in general and, specifically, in the Big Apple, when, according to the FBI, there is a clear trend towards decrease in the number of crimes throughout the country.
This concern for security is the excuse that justified the order of the governor of the state of New York, Kathy Hochul, to deploy almost a thousand national guard soldiers in the metropolis system. And this week Mayor Eric Adams announced another 800 to stop people from crowding into this transport en masse.
However, the data is even more contradictory in the city of skyscrapers. In February, shootings, homicides and armed robberies fell compared to a year ago, although there is a slight rebound in assaults, although still well below 2022.
New York has a lower crime rate than any other major city in the United States, despite its larger population, surveys indicate. But there are weeks like this that provoke alarming headlines, which repeat in a loop, after the death of a commuter, pushed onto the subway tracks, and of a police officer, Jonathan Diller, shot during a routine traffic stop. His death was widely echoed because Donald Trump attended the wake this Thursday.
A police officer now retired from the New York force, with extensive experience on the street and in command, clarified that reality is one thing, with the decrease in crimes, and social perception, increasingly negative, is another. “Right now, perception is treated as reality,” he stressed.
The New York police spokesperson did not respond to the media's question of whether the uptick in assaults includes an increase in violence against women, as shown by the videos circulating on the Internet. That spokesperson did clarify that complaints are made at the police station, not on the networks.
Sarah Harvard, 30, is another who shared her experience of seeing other women's videos. In
“I wasn't on my phone, I was just walking, I didn't see anything nor could I have done anything to prevent what happened,” he stressed. “It was a sharp pain, I felt nausea, headache, dizziness and blurred vision,” she said. Thinking it was something isolated, she did not go to the police. But he has seen that there are more cases and now he has feelings of insecurity in what is his city.
That is the same feeling that other women express in their videos. Mikayla Toninato, a design student, also made a post in which she reported that she received a blow to her face, on the right cheekbone. “It doesn't hurt as much as the shock I experienced,” she said in an interview on NBC.
