A crew of rock-throwing teens pummeled an elderly do-gooder who agreed to give them a dollar Monday morning – before stealing $200 from the New Yorker about a block from his home, cops said.
Rafael Diaz, 73, was walking home around 8:50 a.m. at East 12th Street near Avenue A when as many as six kids approached him – one a teen girl who feigned innocence as she asked him for a buck, according to police and the victim.
“The girl [was] sweet, nice, you know, dress[ed] good, normal,” Diaz said. “[She said], ‘Oh, can you please give me $1?’ So I say OK, here’s a dollar. Then they say, ‘Oh, he’s got money, let’s jump him!’”
The ruthless crew followed Diaz for half a block – chucking rocks and sticks at him – before the victim decided to duck into a nearby restaurant for cover and pleaded with the people inside to call 911, he said.
But “nobody did anything” – and the crew followed him, with someone pushing him to the ground and one male suspect assailing him with three punches, according to cops and the victim.
At some point during the scuffle, one of the muggers grabbed Diaz’s wallet from his pocket, he said.
“I said, my wallet, my wallet!” Diaz said. “So I tried to run away but everyone [was] too fast. So they threw it in the street.”
“They run like rabbits!” he said of the still-at-large crew who appeared to be only 15 or 16 years old.
He soon realized that $200 was missing from the wallet, as well as his debit card and benefits card, he said.
The senior was taken to Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital, where he was treated and released.
Diaz, who has lived in the neighborhood for 12 years as well as in other areas of the Big Apple – including the Bronx – since he was 15, said nothing like this has ever happened to him before.
But the attack isn’t stopping him from walking around the city he calls home.
“No, it’s just like, you know, you get mad, you know, you have to get over it,” he said. “You know, it’s not easy. Five, six guys jumping you, you know, against you. You’re the only one.”
“I [was] really frustrated and really mad,” he added. “I am [in] my girlfriend’s house. She went to the hospital to get me to relax. She said, Rafael, stay here. Don’t go out – stay [here] because you’re getting mad. You know, you want to find these guys.”
No arrests were immediately made in the broad-daylight stick-up.