Sucker-punch shock
Pol wannabe busted in ‘random attack’ as other vics speak out
A failed political candidate was charged Wednesday with punching a TikTok influencer in the face — after a series of young women were randomly sucker-punched in Manhattan.
Skiboky Stora, 40, of East New York, was charged with attacking Halley Kate Mcgookin, 23, the NYPD said. Stora is a serial failed candidate who has run for City Council, mayor and governor.
Mcgookin told her 1.1 million followers in a viral video how she was punched in the face by a stranger as she walked in Chelsea Monday.
“I was literally just walking and a man came up and punched me in the face,” she said.
Mcgookin’s video about her ordeal attracted more than 41 million views and led to more than a dozen women sharing that they had also recently been suckerpunched in Manhattan.
And former “Real Housewives of New York” star Bethenny Frankel also posted that she had been punched in the face “a few months ago,” outside a bakery on the Upper West Side.
Police did not say if Stora was a suspect in any of the other attacks.
Another victim, Mikayla Toninato, 27, said she was frozen in shock when she was punched in the face by a man more than 6-feet tall on the corner of 14th Street and Fifth Avenue on Monday at 2 p.m., moments after she left her class at Parsons School of Design.
‘Gasped and screamed’
“I didn’t see him coming at all. I screamed out of shock,” she said.
“He knocked my head back so hard I just kind of like gasped and screamed. I just stood there trying to figure out what happened.”
Toninato walked to Union Square a block away to alert a police officer, who told her the random acts of violence may be linked to an addiction center at Union Square West and that there’s been an uptick in random acts of violence in the neighborhood.
She did not file a police report initially but did Wednesday.
Toninato moved to New York from Los Angeles in August to pursue a career in fashion and works in marketing.
“I’m falling behind in my classes. I can’t do my work because I can’t look at my laptop. I can’t get paid. I can’t do my job and I have anxiety to leave my house,” she said.
Toninanto’s video about the attack, which left her with concussion and a black eye, was seen by 11 million people.
Another young woman, comedian Sarah Suzuki Harvard, 29, said she was “punched in the back of my skull from a random man on the street” as she walked out of the Delancey Street-Essex Street subway station.
She did not report the March 19 incident to the police.
And another young woman, who uses the TikTok handle @malous228, said she was pursued and punched by a man Saturday at the entrance to the Times Square subway stop on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street.
Rapper on the side
She also revealed a wanted poster for the man, who she videoed walking up Seventh Avenue after he attacked her.
The spate of random attacks is the latest wave of violent crime to hit New York.
Mcgookin was attacked on the same day a 54-year-old man was pushed to his death in front of a northbound 4 train at the East 125th Street station in East Harlem, allegedly by an attacker with a history of violence and mental illness.
Stora, the alleged suckerpuncher, is a frequent candidate for elected office and performing artist who records rap music under the name Designer Attitude.
His most recent election bid was for City Council in District 9 in Harlem last year. The seat was won by Democrat Yusef Salaam, who was falsely convicted of raping a Central Park jogger along with four other black teens.
Mcgookin posted a clip on Tuesday in which she said she believed her attack was an isolated incident and that TikTok’s algorithm had helped the other women’s accounts go viral too.
“I am not here to argue that New York City can’t be really scary at times, but I have lived here for six years, and I have not had anything even remotely similar happen,” she said.