A masked trio attacked a cyclist in Central Park late Sunday, repeatedly striking her in the head before taking her backpack. The New Yorker fought back with a metal water bottle that had fallen from her bag.
The assault unfolded around 9:45 p.m. as Katherine Marroquin, 32, of the Bronx, rode home from her maintenance job on the Upper West Side. She had made the trip by bicycle for the past year because she was afraid to take the subway.
Marroquin had stopped near East 90th Street and the East Drive to retrieve a pair of AirPods she had dropped on the running path when the masked attackers surrounded her. They demanded her belongings and repeatedly hit her in the head, she said.
“I grabbed myself to the bike and I covered my head because they were hitting me hard,” she said.
The attackers also took her phone from the front of the bicycle and threw it into the lake, Marroquin said.
Still seated on her bike and wearing her backpack, Marroquin said the trio pulled at the bag and began rummaging through it while continuing to kick and strike her.
Then, in an unexpected turn, her Stanley water tumbler fell from the backpack—giving her a way to fight back and possibly preventing more serious injuries.
“When I saw the cup, the first thing I did was like, ‘Well, they’re gonna kill me,’ so I grabbed the cup and I just randomly hit everywhere,” Marroquin said.
The three suspects, believed by police to be in their early 20s, ran toward Fifth Avenue and remained at large Monday.
Marroquin lost her phone, a wallet containing $80 and credit cards, and her Beats headphones. Still, she said the metal tumbler kept the attackers from taking everything she had.
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“I am thankful that I am OK,” she said, noting that some victims of similar attacks “get hit in the head and never wake up.”
Marroquin suffered bruising but declined medical treatment when officers arrived.
“I just wanted to get home because my mom was worried, everybody was worried,” she said.
By Monday morning, she had several purple marks on her face and hands, she said.
“Everything is hurting, I’m sore everywhere,” Marroquin said.
Despite the pain—and her boss’s offer to let her stay home—Marroquin returned to work Monday.
“I’m still going to bike,” she said. “I feel like I’m not safe on the train either. That’s one of the reasons I stopped taking the train.”
The lifelong New Yorker said she began cycling a year ago to avoid what she considers an unsafe subway ride between Manhattan and the Bronx.
“This was always a safe place,” Marroquin said, adding that she believes the city must take a tougher stance against criminals.
“I feel like they deserve consequences, not just, ‘Oh yeah, one ticket and that’s it.’ Then they’re gonna keep doing it again.”
