A savage thug followed a nurse into a Hell’s Kitchen bar bathroom early yesterday and brutally beat her in a stall after she rejected his advances on the dance floor, authorities said.
The 29-year-old victim, whose name is being withheld by The Post, suffered fractures to her eye socket, skull and nose, and needed surgery and 50 stitches to close deep gashes to her face, police said.
The vicious assault occurred at around 2:15 a.m. in the basement bathroom of Social, a sprawling, three-story Irish pub on Eighth Avenue near 48th Street.
“He wanted to dance with her and she rebuffed him,” a source said.
So the creep followed her to the bathroom and barged into the stall.
“She starts pulling her pants up and she fights him off, but it was a brutal physical assault on her,” the source said.
“She was seriously beaten.”
The victim, a registered pediatric nurse who lives on the Upper East Side, kicked and bit the man, but he pummeled her unconscious.
Investigators suspect the man may have slammed her head against the sink or toilet bowl.
Surveillance video taken from a police camera outside the bar captured the suspect — who cops described as a Hispanic man in his mid-20s — casually walking out, then looking at and shaking his right hand. Moments later, he appears on the video surveillance of a convenience store 200 feet away.
He remains at large.
When the woman didn’t return from the bathroom, a friend, who is also a nurse, went to look for her.
“She goes and finds her sprawled on the floor,” said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
Not realizing her friend had been assaulted, she called 911 and said the woman had passed out and hit her head.
An ambulance, but no police car, was dispatched.
“The friend did not report it as a crime,” a source said.
The woman was taken to Weill Cornell Medical Center, and when she came to several hours later, she told staffers there that she had been attacked and police were finally called.
The woman, who was found with her pants partially down, said she did not think she had been raped. A rape kit taken at the hospital later came back negative, sources said.
But cops “believe that there was an attempted sexual assault,” according to NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.
The victim, who is originally from Connecticut, underwent surgery and was in stable condition in a VIP wing of the hospital with her family by her side, sources said.
Police combed the bar, which is popular with the after-work crowd, for evidence yesterday. A manager there called the assault “horrible.”
“We’re cooperating with the police right now,” he said. “It can happen anywhere.”
Additional reporting by Larry Celona, Edmund Demarche, Lachlan Cartwright and Jennifer Bain