A courageous older woman on her way to a New Year’s church service fought back when a violent group of teenage girls beat her during a botched robbery at a Brooklyn subway station, police said.
Linda Rosa, 71 – a retired MTA computer operations worker who lives in East New York – got off the No. 3 train at Hoyt Street just after 6 p.m. and had just passed through the turnstile when one of the four girls tried to grab her bag, said she told The Post on Friday.
“And then me [said to myself]“Oh no, this isn’t going to happen today,” Rosa said.
Then another teen also tried to grab Rosa’s bag and said, “Oh, you want to fight?”
Rosa continued to hold her handbag tightly, which did not discourage the young robbers.
“The first person kept fighting,” Rosa said. “She hit me in the face and I have my glasses on and I have a cut on my nose. When she hit me in the face, my glasses flew to the floor.”
“Meanwhile, the other young lady was still trying to distract me from getting my wallet or going into my bag, getting something out of my bag,” she recalled.
The teen eventually grabbed a pocket bag that contained Rosa’s ID and medical records, she said.
“I was still struggling with the first person,” Rosa said. ‘Then I tried to kick her between her legs, but my leg didn’t extend far enough, so I think that’s when I fell. I fell and she stomped on me.”
Rosa said she felt the hostile teens weren’t done yet, so she took action.
“I got the impression she was going to punch me again, but she was aiming for my head,” she said. “So I immediately got up, and with that I grabbed her braids and twisted them around my right hand, and then I pulled her down. She had her head down. Then the other young lady said, “Let her go.” And I said, ‘Oh no, I’m not letting her go.’
The senior screamed for someone to help her – when she noticed the second teen had thrown her pocket bag on the ground and was coming back to her.
“So out of nowhere I grabbed her hair and twisted it around my left hand,” Rosa said. “So I had them both face down….[like] rams as they prepare to fight.
The other girls shouted, ‘Let them go! Let them go!” but Rosa held on and shouted, ‘I need help! I need help!”
A moment later, Rosa let go and started picking up her things from the floor.
The startled teens ran up the stairs when Rosa told them she was going to call the police.
Rosa — who retired from the MTA in 2016 after working for the agency for about 42 years — then went to the nearby Brooklyn Tabernacle Church, where staff attended to her and called 911.
She was taken to Brooklyn Hospital Center for treatment.
Rosa said she is grateful she wasn’t injured more seriously.
“Thank God they didn’t have guns,” she said. “I thank God I didn’t have a heart attack and stroke and die!”
Her attackers — seen walking through the turnstile in footage released by the NYPD — were still at large Friday, but Rosa said she is already showing them some mercy.
‘I forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing,” Rosa said. “They don’t know what they did. They’re just teenagers acting stupid.”
The attack came during a violent period on the city’s public transport system, leaving a woman burned, a man pushed in front of a train and multiple stab and slash wounds.
“It can happen to anyone,” Rosa said of the violence. “Now we see seniors being attacked. Anywhere – it can happen anywhere and at any station. You could walk down the street. You could be crossing the street.”
