Another New York City woman is speaking out about being sucker punched by a stranger in Manhattan after viral TikTok videos of women recounting similar assaults prompted police to arrest a suspect in connection with one of the incidents Wednesday.
Sarah Harvard, 29, claims she was randomly attacked on March 19 on Delancey Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
“I just stood there for a moment,” she told The New York Daily News. “[It was] like someone just put my brain in a jar and just shook it.”
Harvard, who performs stand-up comedy, did not seek medical treatment, and hosted a comedy show right after the purported incident.
“I still had a headache, still felt a little dizzy. I have this mentality of, someone said, ‘New York tough,’” she told the paper. “If I’m not bleeding and there’s no lump, then I don’t need to go [to a doctor].”
In an interview with NewsNation, she said she believed the man who attacked Parsons student Mikayla Toninato was also the same person who punched her.
Toninato took to TikTok on Monday to recount an alleged assault that happened as she left the Greenwich Village Design College.
“I remember it’s, like, pretty ingrained in my head of what he looked like. The thing is, I want to make a note that he attacked me from behind so when I turn around and looked back, he was already running away, so, I only saw the back side of his body but it’s literally the same build same hair, you know, same fashion sense,” Harvard told the network Wednesday.
assault of TikToker Halley Kate Mcgookin, whose video prompted
other women to tell their stories. @skiboky_stora / Instagram
“So, I’m pretty confident it’s him but I’m going to the police to show the photo and hopefully, through CCTV footage, and also maybe the help of testimonies from other women who are witnesses will be able to identify his name and hopefully get him apprehended.”
The NYPD told The Post that they did not have any complaints on record of the supposed attack.
Harvard’s interviews came on the same day the NYPD charged a 40-year-old Brooklyn man with an attack on Halley Kate Mcgookin in Chelsea, whose Monday TikTok about the incident racked up some 46 million views.
In a follow-up post, the influencer told her 1.2 million followers that she believed the success of her post had influenced the platform’s algorithm to pump up similar videos.
“They [the NYPD] were very on it and helpful, and obviously they arrested him very quickly, so I do highly encourage any of the girls who have been assaulted to make sure if this happens to you: report it to the police and try to remember as much detail as you possibly can,” Mcgookin said in a Wednesday TikTok that highlighted The Post’s coverage of her arrest.