Don’t mess with 71-year-old Linda Rosa. Four teens tried to steal her purse as she was exiting a Brooklyn subway station, and it didn’t end well — for them.
As Rosa tells it, she grabbed two of the attackers by their hair and slammed them face-first into the floor, saying, “Oh, you want to fight?”
On New Year’s Day, the senior from East New York was making her way to a church service when she stepped off the No. 3 train at Hoyt Street around 6 p.m. and into an ambush.
Just after passing through the turnstile, a group of four teen girls approached her, and one of them tried to snatch her purse, Rosa told the New York Post.
“And then I [said to myself], ‘Oh, no, this is not going to happen today,’” she recalled. When a second girl also reached for her purse, Rosa asked, “Oh, you want to fight?” That’s when all hell broke loose.
“The first person kept fighting,” Rosa said. “She punched me in my face and I have my glasses on, and I have a cut on my nose. When she punched me in my face, my glasses flew to the floor.”
“Meanwhile, the other young lady was still trying to distract me to get my pocketbook or go into my purse,” she stated, adding that it contained her ID and medical records. The girl successfully wrangled the bag away from Rosa, but the scuffle continued.
“I was still wrestling with the first person,” Rosa said. “Then I was trying to kick her in between her legs, but my leg wouldn’t stretch far enough, so I believe that’s when I fell. I fell, and then she stomped on me.” The quick-thinking victim, however, made the girls regret ever targeting her that day and somehow managed to turn the tables on her attackers.
“I got an impression in me that she was going to stomp me again, but she was going to aim towards my head,” she recalled. “So I got up right away, and with that, I grabbed her braids and twirled them around my right hand, and then I pulled her down. She had her head down. Then the other young lady said, ‘Let her go.’ And I said, ‘Oh, no, I’m not letting her go.’”
With one girl pinned to the ground, Rosa began calling for help, but no one came to her assistance. Unfortunately, the fight didn’t end there. She saw a second girl charge toward her again.
“So out of nowhere, I grabbed her hair and twisted it around my left hand,” Rosa said. “So I had them both facedown….[like] rams when they’re getting ready to fight.”
By that time, the other teens were screaming at Rosa to let their friends go, but she refused and held on tight, yelling, “I need assistance! I need assistance!” to no avail. When the senior released the girls, they ran out of the subway station, which is located next to Fulton Mall in downtown Brooklyn.
Rosa gathered up her belongings and walked to the Brooklyn Tabernacle Church about a block away, where church staff called 911. She was treated for injuries at The Brooklyn Hospital Center and says she is grateful that the attack wasn’t worse. On January 3, the NYPD released surveillance footage of the perpetrators, who are still at large.
“Thank God they didn’t have no weapons,” Rosa told the outlet. “I thank God I didn’t have a heart attack and a stroke and die!”
The NYPD released statistics that showed subway crime rates were down last year through November compared to the same time in 2023, but murder went up from five killings to nine. After a Brooklyn train conductor was slashed in February, Gov. Kathy Hochul deployed hundreds of state troopers and National Guard members to patrol the subways. Also, Mayor Eric Adams added 1,000 uniformed officers last year and installed hundreds of surveillance cameras.
But a recent surge of brutal, high-profile subway attacks — including a woman who was burned alive in December — has everyone on edge.
“It could happen to anybody,” Rosa said of the violence. “Now we’re seeing seniors getting attacked. Anywhere — it can happen anywhere, any station. You could be walking down the street. You could be crossing the street.”
Despite the harrowing experience, Rosa has already forgiven the girls.
“I forgive them. They do not know what they do,” she said. “They don’t know what they did. It’s just teenagers acting foolish.”
