NEW YORK — Surveillance footage shows a man knocking out an elderly woman on the Upper West Side, rendering her unconscious. That suspect is still on the run.
It happened around 7 p.m. on Friday night when Geula Freeman, 81, was walking her son’s dog on West 66th Street, near Amsterdam.
Video footage shows a man in a black t-shirt walking past Freeman, but then turning around, walking back across the sidewalk to where Freeman was standing with the dog, and slamming his fist into Freeman’s face. The force of the blow threw Freeman into the side of a building before collapsing to the sidewalk. As a passerby turns and walks over to check on Freeman, the suspect can be seen flagging down a doorman and apparently asking him to call an ambulance.
“You show no remorse, sick man,” said a neighbor named Scott.
The incident was captured on Scott’s surveillance cameras.
“Sad. I really felt sorry for her, she’s such a sweet woman,” he said.
Some neighbors say they feel less safe because they are looking out for themselves and their surroundings.
“It’s a little scary. I have two girls, two teenage girls. I live here, of course, so they come in and out a lot,” Scott said.
Elderly woman suffers memory loss, broken nose in random attack on New York’s Upper West Side
“A random act of insanity. It wasn’t directed at me personally. It was just me being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Freeman said.
Freeman said the attack left her with bruises, a broken nose and memory loss.
“My face was throbbing and I had a really bad headache… I have complete memory loss, completely, one hundred percent, not even a little bit,” she said.
Freeman says despite her injuries, she has a lot to be thankful for.
“I am getting a second chance at life because they explained to me that what happened was really, really, really dangerous. I could have died,” she said.
NYPD crime statistics show that there have been 86 crimes in the 20th Precinct this year, compared to 80 crimes during the same period last year. That’s an increase of nearly 8 percent.
Anyone with information about this incident is asked to contact the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782)The public can also submit tips on the Crime Stoppers website at crimestoppers.nypdonline.orgor press X by tagging or messaging @NYPDTips.
Naveen Dhaliwal
