NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – An NYU administrator was sucker-punched in broad daylight this week near Washington Square Park, police said Thursday, amid investigations into unprovoked attacks on women in Lower Manhattan.
The administrator, a 27-year-old woman, was walking at Washington Square North and Fifth Avenue just before 12:30 p.m. Wednesday when a man suddenly slugged her in the right side of her face, according to cops and an NYU campus safety notice.
The victim suffered bruising and swelling to her face. She was treated at the scene and did not go to a hospital, police said.
An NYPD investigation into the attack is ongoing.
The NYU memo said the incident was being investigated as a hate crime and “might be tied to reports of a series of similar unprovoked attacks on women.”
Police have been investigating numerous unprovoked assaults on women in recent weeks, many of them punched in the face by men in Chelsea and Greenwich Village. Some of them took to TikTok to give accounts of what happened to them and to warn others.
Last month, NYU’s Department of Campus Safety put out a safety advisory saying it was “aware of reports on social media of female-presenting individuals being assaulted in several New York City neighborhoods—mostly in lower Manhattan, including in areas near Washington Square Park—while walking on the sidewalk.”