One of the fans of Stop Street Harassment on Facebook brought the following horrific story to my attention, so I’m already breaking my holiday hiatus and quickly posting about it.
The NY Daily News is reporting that as many as eight men surrounded a 16-year old girl outside a restaurant in Queens and harassed her. They say there may have been “unwanted sexual advances” and the men continued them as she went into a subway station. She ran onto a subway car and the men followed her and dragged her off. During the struggle, she fatally stabbed one of the men, then ran back to the subway and got on. The men chased her but did not catch her. The stabbed man had a long list of convictions, including attempted murder, which makes the fact that they were trying to drag her off even scarier.
While the narrative of what happens makes it seem very clear that this was a hurrendous case of street harassment and she was defending herself to prevent who knows what else from happening (how would YOU respond if a group of 7-8 men tried to drag you away somewhere), but the article says a police officer only “suspects” she acted in self defense. So… is there more to the story or are they being overly cautious about naming what happened? Because this sounds exactly like self defense.
Unless they reveal a whole other situation they better not charge her with anything other than self defense. As the Facebook Fan who alerted me to this story said,
“I think it’s important that we contact the DA to ensure that charges are not brought against this woman. She was clearly a victim of street harassment. If she didn’t defend herself god knows what these thugs would have done to her.”
beckie Weinheimer says
Horrible. I live in Queens. I wonder what station and what time of night. I always feel safe because it is so crowded, but this is horrible! I feel so badly for her.
Golden Silence says
Beckie, I believe this was the F line at 21st-Queensbridge.
I’m sure What About Our Daughters? will be all over this one. Something needs to be done about those roughnecks who hang out on the corner (not just in NYC, but any urban area) and do nothing but cause trouble. Something’s beyond wrong when a teenage girl has to be prepared to kill in order to get about her day. What a scary world.
nycthinker says
According to the newspapers they say that they have witnesses and possibly a video of the incident and they believe that she was the aggressor. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what the video tape shows.
Golden Silence says
Yup. This article I found states that she was the aggressor and that the guys were innocent.
One article skews towards her being the victim, and this one treats the deceased like the victim—don’t know what to believe.
administrator says
Hmm. It sounds like whatever happened, it was complicated. Hopefully more info will come out.
**BrownEyedBeauty** says
I agree with the administrator. It does sound complicated. Golden Silence is right, too…we live in a really scary world.
**BrownEyedBeauty** says
I live in an “urban area” and this is a problem…lots of troublemakers hanging out everywhere.
Golden Silence says
I hope more information comes out, too. The recent thing I’ve heard is that the girl turned herself in to the police and is now being charged with manslaughter. There are still conflicting stories floating around as to who did what, though.
Sarah says
Have read several accounts of this story. Looks to me like they were harassing her, she got lippy and they got pissed off at her. She tried to get away on the train but they tried to drag her back onto the platform. She stabbed him and I totally think it was self defense. And really, I don’t bloody care if the deceased has a baby at home. He shouldn’t have been attacking a young girl. Being dead doesn’t automatically make you a nice person!