A late-night stop for a bite to eat left a beautiful student nearly blinded when she turned down a lecherous thug’s come-on and he responded by punching her in the face at an Upper East Side pizza parlor, officials said.
“I have nightmares now. I wake up in the middle of the night with him beating me. He was a maniac,” said the 26-year-old victim, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Christine. “It was horrific and scary. I’m traumatized.”
Cops say the savage beating took place at John & Tony’s Pizzeria on First Avenue at 60th Street at 3:50 a.m. on March 20. Dzemal Kolenovic, 31, of Brooklyn approached the victim as she was eating with a pal and began hurling pick-up lines at her.
“I asked him nicely, ‘Can you please leave us alone?’ ” Christine said. “He just started cursing, ‘F- – – you, bitches. You whores.’ ”
When the woman and her friend stepped outside, the hot-headed thug allegedly began throwing punches in an explosion of violence.
“He threw me to the ground. I asked him, ‘Why are you doing this?’ and he said, ‘Because I’m Albanian, I can do whatever the f- – – I want,’ ” she said.
Her friend tried to dial 911 on her cellphone, but Kolenovic smacked it out of her hands into her face, leaving the friend with a fractured jaw, police said.
He then turned his fury back on Christine as she cowered on the pavement and beat her unconscious.
“First he punched me once in the right eye and then he got really wound up and hit my left eye. I had bruises all over. My arm, my knees were all cut, and my lower back. Both my eyes were swollen shut,” she said.
As she lay unconscious, Kolenovic and his friends hopped into a car and fled, police said.
“I don’t remember the ambulance ride and woke up in the hospital,” Christine said.
She was taken to New York Hospital where she was treated for “bruising and substantial pain to both eyes as well as blindness in [the] left eye,” according to the criminal complaint.
Her vision has since returned although she may require several surgeries, she said.
“I just went inside for a slice of pizza. I don’t even know the guy. He just came out of the blue and beat the crap out of me.”
Cops were able to track down Kolenovic via restaurant credit-card receipts, sources said. He turned himself in to police last Wednesday and was charged with two counts of felony assault, said a spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Kolenovic was released on $5,000 bail and is due back in court today. His lawyer declined to comment.
Kolenovic has a rap sheet with a 2001 arrest for disorderly conduct for which he served four days in city jail and a 2005 arrest for a motor-vehicle infraction in Queens.
Christine said she’s just stunned.
“My main concern is that he doesn’t come after me and he doesn’t do this to anyone else,” she said.
Additional reporting by Amber Sutherland