Source
Several women have come forward on social media sharing incidents in which they said they were punched by men while they were walking the streets of downtown Manhattan in broad daylight in the last month.
Multiple videos — which were uploaded to TikTok — have picked up traction in the last week, with women online sharing their safety concerns in comments and reply videos. One woman said she was assaulted walking home from class. Another said she was assaulted on her way to work. A third woman said she was attacked walking her dog. At least two of the women described suspects with similar characteristics.
New York police said Tuesday they are investigating two recent incidents of women being assaulted. While police wouldn't confirm that the incidents described in the TikTok videos are those they are investigating, they shared that they're looking into two cases that are very similar to accounts posted on social media. Officials said it's unclear whether the two incidents they are investigating are connected.
Sarah Harvard, 30, was among the women who shared her experience online after she saw other women post videos. Harvard, who posted Tuesday on X, said she was walking to her comedy gig on the Lower East Side when she was punched in the back of the head near the Delancey Street and Essex Street station the evening of March 19.
Since the attack, Harvard said, she is struggling with feeling unsafe in the city she calls home.
In their TikTok videos, women have echoed similar sentiments describing their interactions with their alleged assailants. A woman said she was walking Monday when a man punched her in the face, causing a big lump to develop on her head.
The woman didn't say where exactly she was when she was assaulted. NBC News conducted a geolocation of where she was walking in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Police said an incident happened at 10:20 a.m. in the area of West 16th Street and 7th Avenue when "an unknown individual hit her in the head."
She shared an update to TikTok in which she said she was looking at her phone when a man walking a dog assaulted her.
Over a week before, in an area just over a mile south from where this woman was, another woman reported getting punched by a man who apologized before he hit her.
Police say an incident happened at around 11:48 a.m. March 17 while a woman was walking her dog in the area of Kenmare and Mulberry streets.
In an update posted to her TikTok account, the woman addressed questions she received about what she was doing leading up to the assault.
Neither of the women who posted on TikTok responded to requests for comment. Several others who also posted videos didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Many women online have since expressed that seeing the videos of other women sharing their alleged experiences have left them feeling uneasy.
