Woman Punches Brooklyn MTA Worker in Head After Reportedly Trying to Dodge Subway Fare

New York City police are searching for a woman in her 30s who they say punched a Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) worker in the head for trying to intervene in an argument with another MTA worker at the Bay Ridge Avenue subway station in Brooklyn.

The fight broke out just after midnight on Tuesday, Sept. 13, police say.

Here’s the NYPD account:

“The victim, a 52-year-old female who is an MTA worker, was inside the Bay Ridge Avenue station when she observed the female suspect and unknown male in a verbal dispute. She then observed the two in a verbal dispute with another MTA worker. When the victim advised the other MTA worker not to get involved and to notify the police, the female suspect punched the victim in the head. The female suspect and the male then fled the station. The victim refused medical attention on scene.”

Subway surveillance photos of the suspect, taken on the night of the attack and released by the NYPD, show her dressed in skimpy party clothes and hoop earrings. The man she was with wore sunglasses and a baseball cap.

The New York Daily News spoke to the victim, identified as 52-year-old Sunset Park grandmother Marisol Delgado.

“I was screaming, I was crying because she hurt me really bad,” Delgado told the paper. “I had black and blue bruises on my forehead.”

She said the woman who attacked her had been arguing with a male companion and calling him a chicken because he wouldn’t hop the turnstile.

The other MTA worker intervened, Delgado said, when the woman opened the emergency exit to let her companion slip through without paying.

Via the Daily News:

When Delgado told the booth clerk to call the police, the woman in the skimpy outfit went berserk and slugged Delgado in the head, knocking her to the ground before fleeing the station with her pal. Delgado was treated at Lutheran Hospital.

Since the attack, she suffers from headaches and has been on worker’s compensation. She wants to be assigned to clean a different station out of fear the woman may come back.

“Really, I’m traumatized right now,” Delgado said.

The NYPD describes the female suspect as a 30- to 35-year-old Hispanic female standing at about 5 feet 5 inches and weighing about 160 pounds.

Anyone with information regarding this incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers hotline at 800-577-TIPS. Tips can also be submitted online or by texting 274637, then entering TIP577.