A man who said he “just felt like punching someone” did just that, randomly slugging a Catholic deacon in the face inside a Bronx subway station this week, cops said.
Frederick Kurr, 74 — who serves at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the Belmont section of the Bronx, according to police sources — was trying to go through the turnstile at the Kingsbridge Road subway station around 10:10 a.m. Tuesday, authorities said.
When Kurr had trouble swiping his MetroCard, the suspect, walking the other way, suddenly punched him, according to cops and the sources.
“Don’t shout,” the attacker allegedly told the victim when he called out for help. “I just felt like punching someone.”
The assailant then took off, and the septuagenarian refused medical attention on scene for swelling and pain.
Although authorities described the victim as a priest, a nun and another unidentified woman at the rectory told the Post he is in fact a deacon.
“He doesn’t want to talk,” the woman said. “He is doing well. He is doing OK.”
Reached by phone, the deacon’s daughter, Heidi Kurr, said she is “very concerned” for her father. He is getting checked out at the clinic to determine whether he has internal bleeding, she said.
“To get sucker punched for no reason at all…..that’s sad,” she said. “I am scared for him. I worry about him because he is 74.”
“To be honest, it’s crazy because they are doing this to all the people,” Heidi Kurr added. “It’s a mental health issue. It could be that they are not getting their medication, and staying at home, being isolated might make their pre-existing condition worse.”
The Rev. Israel Bodi, assistant pastor at the parish, said Kurr regularly attends the noon Mass and would have definitely been there on Wednesday — the feast of the Epiphany, or Three Kings Day — if he hadn’t been assaulted.
“I can imagine [how] he himself feels at the moment,” Bodi said. “He is such a gentle person. Probably he has offered it to God [to take care of it], I mean, knowing who he is. But the physical pain will surely be there.”
Kurr usually wears his collar, according to Bodi, so “if this [attacker] was sane, he would have known that he is a clergy.”
Still, he added, “I guess this could happen to anybody.”
Bodi and other church staff will contact Kurr to offer their support, he said.
“We will all give him the encouragement he needs and support in every way possible.”