A WOMAN is suing the New York Police Department (NYPD) and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) after she was brutally beaten by an escaped mental patient while two subway workers looked on.
While Lisseth Choez, 22, was waiting on the platform of a Brooklyn subway station, a hulking 6-foot stranger smashed his fist into her cheek, the New York Post reported.
He grabbed the stunned woman’s head, slamming it into an iron gate in the nearly empty waiting area.
As two MTA employees watched the assault and screamed from inside their secure booth, the man in the white undershirt kept beating Ms Choez – kicking her and punching her in the head until her eye socket fractured.
He then grabbed her by the neck in a chokehold, lifting the terrified woman into the air before throwing her like a rag doll to the platform.
It was 10 minutes before police finally showed up and subdued Timothy Prude, 43, who managed to hit a policeman during his arrest.
The attack, which took place on August 18, last year should have happened, Ms Choez claims, because Prude had been in police custody at nearby Woodhull Hospital minutes before, according to a $1 million lawsuit she filed last week in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
Ms Choez, who is also suing the MTA, says the transit workers failed to alert police quickly, even as they watched Prude beat her to a bloody pulp.
Station agents are not allowed to leave the booth or let anyone inside, said an NYC Transit spokesman, who added that station agents can contact emergency personnel via a booth communication system.
Prude was charged with second- and third-degree assault charges, menacing and harassment in the incident and additional charges relating to his treatment of police post-arrest.
He has been in and out of the Bellevue psychiatric institution since being jailed.
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