Social media videos in which women describe being punched by a stranger in seemingly random attacks in Manhattan have sparked concerns about women’s safety this week. The alleged victims, women in their 20s and 30s, detailed broadly similar attacks in posts on TikTok and Instagram.
One man has been arrested so far in one of the alleged attacks, which are reaching a vast audience beyond New York thanks to algorithmically driven social feeds.
“You guys, I was literally just walking, and a man came up and punched me in the face,” Halley Kate Mcgookin, a New York-based fashion influencer, said in a March 25 video posted to TikTok that has since been viewed 49 million times.
Mcgookin, who did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment, said on TikTok she filed a police report that day. A spokesperson for the NYPD confirmed a report had been filed that matched Mcgookin’s complaint, but did not identify the victim by name.
Commenters on Mcgookin’s post began tagging other women who had reported similar attacks, including Olivia Brand, a New York woman who described being punched by a stranger in video posted on March 17.
“I literally just got punched by some man on the sidewalk,” Brand said in the video. “He goes, ‘sorry,’ and then punches me in the head.”
“What the hell is happening?” said Brand, who could not be reached for comment.
Mikayla Toninato, a 27-year-old student at the Parsons School of Design, saw Mcgookin’s video and replied “@Halley i quite literally feel your pain this was so insane.” Toninato in a video said she was leaving class and while looking down at her phone when “out of nowhere, a man came up and hit me in the face.”
Toninato, who did not respond to an email requesting comment, said in her video that when she told her friends what just happened, they sent her Mcgookin’s video.
Sarah Harvard, who was attacked March 19, didn’t post about her experience at first, assuming it was an isolated incident.
The 30-year-old comedian was headed toward the Delancey St. F train on the Lower East Side before a comedy show that night when she was suddenly punched in the back of the head.
“I was walking, no AirPods, not looking at my phone, and it took me by surprise,” Harvard told The Post. She recalled immediately thinking she had just experienced a needle spiking attack or that she had been stabbed. She turned behind her and didn’t see anyone. When she turned back around, she saw a man, tall, clad in denim and with bleached dreadlocks, running away in the direction she had been walking.
“I told friends, but I made jokes about it,” Harvard said once she arrived to her show. But backstage, as she poured a glass of water, Harvard’s producer noticed her hands were shaking.
“I thought, all right, it’ll probably never happen again. It’s a one-time thing,” Harvard said. It wasn’t until she started seeing videos about other attacks that she took her experience to Instagram and Twitter in a text-based format. Harvard filed a police report on March 27.
At least two other women, online content creator Selena Pikanab and model Karina Dunford, posted videos describing similar incidents. A seventh woman, only identified by her TikTok handle, posted a video describing a similar attack before making her account private.
What are police and authorities saying?
New York Police arrested a suspect in Mcgookin’s alleged attack this week. They did not respond to direct questions about how many reports of strangers punching women they’ve received in recent weeks or whether they believe the incidents are connected.
“The N.Y.P.D. is aware of a viral video circulating on social media depicting a woman who was randomly assaulted in an unprovoked attack. The individual has been arrested and charged,” the department said in a statement Wednesday.
A spokesperson for the NYPD told The Post an investigation is “ongoing” but confirmed that on March 25, a 23-year-old woman reported she was in the Chelsea neighborhood around 10:20 a.m. when “an unknown individual hit her in the head.” Police said the victim fell to the ground, suffered injuries to the left side of her face and later sought medical treatment. The incident matches the encounter Mcgookin described in a video, which she said was posted immediately after the attack.
New York University’s Department of Campus Safety sent an alert to students on Wednesday acknowledging concerns about the recent reports of women being attacked but said there were no records of reports from NYU students or staff being involved.
New York police on Wednesday arrested 40-year-old Skiboky Stora of Brooklyn and charged him with misdemeanor assault in connection to the incident Mcgookin reported to police two days earlier. Stora, who pleaded not guilty at his Thursday arraignment, remained in custody Friday on $10,000 bail, according to jail records.
Jeffrey Linehan, a public defender assigned to Stora’s case, declined to comment.
Stora is a perennial local political candidate who in the past three years has launched unsuccessful long-shot bids for governor, mayor and city council member, according to public records. His social media history is dotted with frequent posts of him posing shirtless in front of a Donald Trump flag or instances of him filming and harassing women on the street or the subway.
Stora has previous arrests for harassment and assault, according to court records.
What role does social media play?
While overall crime is down in the city, New Yorkers have experienced upticks in certain areas, including misdemeanor assaults and felony assaults, which increased 10 percent and 3 percent, respectively, compared to the same time last year, according New York City crime data.
But awareness of attacks that appear to be localized to Lower Manhattan has mushroomed across social media in the past week, largely thanks to TikTok’s unique algorithm. Collectively, the initial TikTok videos of women describing their alleged attacks have been viewed more than 70 million times — a sum that doesn’t account for the creators’ follow-up videos and videos about the attacks that other content creators cite, known on TikTok as stitching.
“I think [TikTok] is pretty integral to how it happened,” said Kate Lindsey, who founded the internet and culture newsletter Embedded.
TikTok’s algorithm picks up videos users are interested in and curates similar ones into a moment, scooping up related videos even if they are months or years old. Lindsey suspects the story topic was further boosted by the fact that one of the victims is an established influencer who already had more than 1.2 million followers — and she shared several additional follow-up videos after her attack.
“That the algorithm really concentrates around a trending topic can really overblow it; it can feel a lot more relevant than it is,” Lindsey said. “If you scroll a feed and see this is all anyone is talking about, you could be forgiven for stepping outside and thinking this is something you need to worry about.”
Harvard, the comedian who described being attacked last week, said the attention has been overwhelming and predicted it would have been even worse had she posted a video to TikTok rather than a text post to Instagram.
While she said her and the other victims’ attacks are both real and frightening, Harvard has been dismayed with how the narratives around them have been hijacked into one-dimensional arguments. She has observed that what should be a discussion about public safety is often drowned out by racist comments about the suspects or people both doubting and blaming the women for being attacked.
Harvard said she shared her experience in hopes of warning other women in New York and sourcing information that could help the police, whose performance thus far she called disappointing. But the insults, threats and conspiracies she’s received have made her wary of social media’s power to influence.
“I sometimes wish I had never spoke up,” she said.