On mend from mugging
Kin of grandma punched down church steps see improvement
A 68-year-old Queens woman who was viciously punched down the steps of a church by a crook Sunday was so badly injured that she didn’t recognize her loved ones for days, family told the Daily News.
Mugging victim Irene Tahliambouris remains in the ICU with a fractured skull and black eye but is showing signs of improvement.
“She’s still recovering. Yesterday she started recognizing us,” Daniel Coffaro Hill, 19, whose brother and Tahliambouris’ niece share a child, said Thursday. “She was brushing her hair today, really slow, but she’s in her right mind. She knows who we are now.”
The culprit walked behind Tahliambouris as she headed up the steps to St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in Briarwood around 8:20 a.m., cops said.
Video viewed by The News shows the man creeping up behind the grandmother and quickly climbing the steps next to her.
He then got in front of the Tahliambouris and punched her in the face, sending her tumbling back down the stairs on 152nd St. near 84th Drive.
“The fact that he just punched her like that, he did not even demand the keys or anything and just pushed her down the stairs so violently — it’s disgusting,” said Hill, who works as the communications director for the Cityline Ozone Park Civilian Patrol.
The robber snatched the grandmother’s purse, which contained $300 and her cell phone, credit cards and car keys before driving off in her 2006 Nissan Altima. He has not been caught. Hill said the car was recovered just over 3 miles away.
“Everyone is shocked that this happened here, on the church steps,” Father Konstantinos Kalogridis, head priest of the church, said Monday.
“Nobody should have to walk in fear ever … [especially] going to church or any place of worship,” said Hill.
Kalogridis said after the incident he spoke with NYPD Police Commissioner Edward Caban, who promised police would be stationed outside the church every Sunday in light of the attack.
“She is a loving 68-year-old grandmother that would always do anything she could to help anyone at all times. Always happy and in good spirits,” the victim’s son, Freddy, wrote in an online fundraiser.
“We can only imagine the pain that she experiencing bieng [sic] knocked off the stairs of the church hitting the back of her head on the concrete while this viscous [sic] person with no consideration to life attacks her and taking all her belongings and car,” he added.
Family members hope the sick attacker is caught and punished.
“We just hope he’s caught, and we hope that the DA prosecutes him to the fullest extent of the law. We want him to stay in jail. They need a clear message that this will not be tolerated,” said Hill.