In one of the stranger crimewaves to hit New York, a number of women have taken to TikTok to share their stories of being punched in the face by a stranger, all on the same day, all in downtown Manhattan.


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One woman, Halley, whose video now has 40 million views, said, “I was literally just walking and a man came up and punched me in the face. Oh my god, it hurts so bad I can’t even talk, literally I fell to the ground and now this giant goose egg is forming,” while another, Mikayla, posted a video later that same day about being punched in the face while leaving class.



Comedian Sarah Suzuki Harvard shared her own experience to Twitter from last week, when she was punched in the back of her skull while leaving Delancey/Essex Street station at 8 p.m. at night. According to one of her follow-up tweets, many of the women who’ve been assaulted have described what sounds like the same man, which has prompted Harvard to file a police report, explaining that she hadn’t until now because she didn’t know how helpful it would be.



In a video from earlier this month, Olivia said, “I literally just got punched by some man on the sidewalk. He goes ‘Sorry!’ and then punches me in the head.” The preemptive apology somehow makes it weirder — you know it’s awful but you go ahead and do it anyway? Another New York City-based woman, Jill, posted her own video last month showing the black eye she received after a man slammed a heavy plastic bag into her face while she was on her way to work.


Whether the perpetrator is the same in all cases, it’s still incredibly bizarre that so many women in one relatively small area have experienced this specific kind of assault within the past month. Hopefully someone can get to the bottom of this.