A suspect is still at large after allegedly punching a 23-year-old woman in the face outside of a McDonald’s near Union Square, Manhattan (Picture: New York Police Department)
Yet another woman has been punched in the face while walking the streets of New York City – this time outside of a McDonald’s.
Ashley Cruz, 23, was walking on the Avenue of the Americans near West 14th Street on the morning of March 20 when a man walked out of the fast food restaurant and sucker punched her, police said.
The suspect approached the woman and ‘struck her in the face with a closed fist, resulting in an injury to her nose’, a New York Police Department spokesperson told Metro.co.uk.
An ambulance transported Cruz to Lenox Health Greenwich Village Hospital.
Police released surveillance footage of a man wanted in connection with punching a woman outside a McDonald’s (Picture: New York Police Department)
The suspect fled on foot southbound on Sixth Avenue ‘to parts unknown’, according to the police department.
Cruz said ‘nothing was said’ by the man before he attacked her.
‘It all happened so fast and I was in shock,’ Cruz told the New York Post on Wednesday night.
Cruz said she exited the L train station at 14th Street and Sixth Avenue to go to her Pilates class and walked past the McDonald’s.
The incident happened outside of a McDonald’s near 14th Street and Sixth Avenue (Picture: AP)
‘I was actually just going to go about my day but I was leaking blood,’ she said.
An Uber Eats delivery driver saw Cruz bleeding and helped her into a Taco Bell.
‘In the bathroom, I got myself together,’ she said. ‘I called 911.’
The suspect fled southbound on Sixth Avenue and then to an unknown direction (Picture: New York Police Department)
Cruz was treated for a nose fracture and her nose was displaced ‘minimally’.
She said she feels ‘exposed’ after the punch.
‘There is no way that anyone could have avoided that. At 10 in the morning,’ she said. ‘Not even on the train. How do you prevent that in Chelsea?’
Dulce Pichardo said she was punched in the face so hard in Brooklyn that she suffered a broken jaw (Picture: WABC)
CCTV released by police shows a suspect wearing a white graphic T-shirt, a jean jacket and brown-colored pants. He remained at large as of Thursday afternoon.
Cruz was attacked days before a school bus aide, Dulche Pichardo, 57, was randomly punched in the face so hard by a man in Brooklyn that she suffered a broken jaw.
Multiple women have recently taken to TikTok to report that they’ve been inexplicably socked in the face, including former Real Housewives star Bethany Frankel, influencer Halley Kate Mcgookin and Parsons School of Fashion student Mikayla Toninato.
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