A young woman says she was randomly slapped on a Manhattan train last week — and the harrowing attack led her to the realization, “F–k New York,” she said in a now-viral TikTok video.
Native New Yorker Vesly Beato, 22, was on a northbound 1 train with her 15-year-old cousin, heading home to Inwood around 2:45 p.m. Friday, when a stranger hit her in the face as the train pulled into the West 66th Street – Lincoln Center station, according to cops and, a WABC report.
“This man slaps the s–t out of me and runs off the damn train,” Beato said in a TikTok she posted Sunday — that has since racked up 1.4 million views.
“Mind you, we didn’t make eye contact not once. He couldn’t see my face because I had a mask and glasses … He could not see me. I was looking down.”
“I remember hearing the slap, looking up, seeing everybody looking at me and my cousin crying and being confused as to what the f–k is going on,” she said. “I didn’t even feel the slap. That’s how in shock I was. And all I remember was people saying, ‘She’s bleeding.’”
“I was so f–king embarrassed, bro, I start[ed] crying. I’m like, did he really just hit me? Was it me that he hit? … I’m like, Did I do anything to deserve this s–t, yo? Like, what the f–k did I do to him?”
Vesly Beato, 22, was slapped in an unprovoked attack onboard a northbound 1 train at the West 66th Street – Lincoln Center station Friday afternoon. Vesly BeatoShe was taken to Mount Sinai West Hospital for a cut on her nose, cops said.
“I’m just glad that this is all [the attacker] left on my face,” she said in the video. “Because you hear so many stories about people getting shot, people getting killed.”
She said the assault changed her opinion of the city.
Beato spoke out about the attack in a viral TikTok. TikTok/Vesly Beato“The worst part is there’s nothing I could have done to help the situation,” she said in the viral clip. “If I would have been looking up, he would have smacked me … If I had pepper spray, I wouldn’t have time to pepper-spray him. If I had a knife, I wouldn’t have had time to stop him.
“There was nothing I could have done to fix this situation,” she continued. “I guess the moral here is, f–k New York.
“I used to love it here, but it’s not the same.”
It’s unclear whether Beato’s attacker was homeless, but she said she remembered his dirty shoes.
No arrests had been made as of Wednesday afternoon, police said.
Beato was hospitalized after the Friday afternoon assault. Vesly Beato
The native New Yorker said she used to love the Big Apple, but the unprovoked subway attack changed her perspective. ABC7 New YorkThe incident came weeks after a similar attack on the Upper East Side.
An 80-year-old woman was on a southbound No. 6 train at the 68th Street-Hunter College station around 4:30 p.m. August 6 when a male stranger hit her multiple times on her head, back and shoulder without saying a word, authorities said.
So far this year, 1,488 crimes have been reported within the city’s transit system — up from the 998 reported during that period in 2021, according to NYPD figures last updated Sunday.
