A stranger randomly bashed a cancer survivor in the head in a broad-daylight attack as he walked outside Macy’s Herald Square this week, cops said – leaving the victim to lament that “New York is not safe.”
Mustafa Sevindik, 71, was strolling with his wife, Hulya Sevindik, 66, and son outside the flagship store on West 34th Street near Seventh Avenue around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday when the petite female assailant began hitting him without warning.
Mustafa initially felt a tap on the back of his head and thought nothing of it before the woman continued to strike him – likely with her cell phone – three more times, Hulya told The Post Thursday.
“She was cursing and hitting him,” the victim’s shaken wife said. “She hit him repeatedly and he said the first one, he thought somebody like a friend…saw him and tapped him, [but] then she kept going then she ran.”
The unhinged attacker, believed to be in her 50s, then ran off into the iconic store, before making her escape onto an escalator or elevator, cops said.
“Then the employees came and some of them ran to catch her and she ran away,” Hulya added. “The officers came, the fire department came, and the ambulance and they took him to the hospital.”
Mustafa was treated at Lenox Hill Healthplex for pain, swelling and bruising – but doctors kept him for several hours and conducted CT scans because they detected blood clots, his wife said.
“New York is not safe,” Mustafa, originally from Turkey, said as his wife translated. “Let’s say she was holding something sharp or a knife or something. I’d be dead. Because it’s happening all the time everywhere.”
Mustafa – who has cancer and previously was undergoing chemotherapy at the hospital but now takes chemo pills – was still rattled as he recovered at home Thursday.
“He’s still scared,” his wife said. “He’s asking me, ‘Is something going to happen?’ His head still hurts him.”
Meanwhile, cops are still looking for the crazed suspect, last seen wearing a long maroon bubble coat, black beanie hat, black pants and carrying a black bag, sources said.
Both felony and misdemeanor assaults have seen a slight uptick so far this year in the confines of the NYPD’s Midtown South Precinct, which covers the area.
As of Sunday, 491 felony assaults were reported in the precinct’s confines this year, up from the 477 tallied during the same period in 2024, the statistics show.
And a total of 1,003 misdemeanor assaults were investigated by the NYPD during that same time period, an increase from the 927 such incidents reported last year, according to the data.
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