A 23-year-old woman who recently moved to the Big Apple was violently mugged on an Upper West Side train Monday night — and now is afraid her parents may make her move back home.
The petite communications consultant, who is from Northern Virginia, told The Post on Tuesday that she was on a No. 3 train at West 72nd Street in Manhattan coming back from a Broadway show around 9:40 p.m. when a mumbling female stranger suddenly approached her, punched her in the face and grabbed her cell phone.
“I was sitting on the train. She was also sitting, and then she stood up quick and then came over and just started punching and hitting me in the face,” said the victim, who asked to remain anonymous. “Some of the other people came up and pushed her off. Then she took my phone.
“It was very unexpected and not what I imagined getting mugged would be like,” the young woman said.
Her attacker then ran off through the train cars, cops said.
The victim said she called her mom afterward.
I was like, ‘Hey, I’m with the police, someone took my phone and kind of attacked me,’ ” the straphanger said. “She was like, ‘Oh, my God!’ She was freaked out, but my dad was calm. I was like, ‘Don’t make me move back home!’ ”
Less than an hour later, a 20-year-old man was walking home at West 66th Street and West End Avenue, also on the Upper West Side, when a guy approached and said, “I like your jacket,” cops said.
The mugger flashed a gun in his waistband, prompting the victim to hand over his jacket, cops said.
The thief took off, police said.
Additional reporting by David Meyer