Bx. clinic beating
Victim, 70, was waiting for care
This is low even for a mugger. A robber targeted an elderly dialysis patient as the victim waited outside a Bronx clinic to receive treatment, beating the poor woman up and threatening to stab her before robbing her of her sandwich and fleeing, cops said Monday.
“I’m so scared, I’ve been trembling since this happened,” victim Jean Richards told The Post.
The 70-year-old woman’s harrowing experience began when a driver dropped her off in front of the DaVita Riverdale Dialysis Center on West 233 Street at 4:40 a.m. Saturday so she could be first in line when the clinic opened its doors at 5 a.m.
Richards said she is in advanced renal failure and must undergo kidney dialysis three times a week or she’ll die.
“She likes to be the first one in,” a DaVita worker told The Post.
As Richards waited outside Saturday, a young woman in a hoodie came up to her saying, “I’m cold,” and asking when the next bus arrived, the victim recalled.
Suddenly, the woman grabbed Richards’ purse — and when the senior tried to tug it back, the mugger walloped her in the face, she said.
“She punched me five times,” the petite senior said, shaking in the doorway of her city apartment.
One side of her face was bruised and her eye was red.
Richards said she refused medical treatment at the scene, preferring to go home instead of to the emergency room.
The police found her purse and returned it to her, but she told The Post the crook kept “my debit card, my medical card and my sandwich.”
“She knows where I live and she’s coming back,” the frightened septuagenarian worried.
The incident has taken its toll on Richards. “I’ve lived in New York City for 50 years, and this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said.
But Richards is hopeful that her attacker will be caught.
“I think the police know who she is,’’ Richards said. “She looked about 20 years old and behaved like a drug addict. I hope they get her.”
The attack on the Bronx woman was only the latest in a rash of assaults and robberies against the city’s elderly.
Richards’ neighbors were particularly troubled.
“They are not human, the people who could do this,’’ said Kabir Kabir, 21. “She’s such a nice lady.”
The clinic worker insisted his workplace “is in a safe neighborhood.
Still, Richards said, “They changed my appointments to later in the day, when people are around.”