It was more Dunderhead and Thumbelina than David and Goliath — but a Queens woman put a hapless carjacker to shame all the same on busy Madison Avenue yesterday.
All it took was a standard stick shift.
Anne Justima, 31, of Jackson Heights, was heading home at around 7:15 p.m. with her husband, Peter, 33, after working on their new restaurant, Tiny Thai, when a knife-wielding lug lumbered up to their black Volkswagen on Madison Avenue between East 71st and East 72nd streets.
“We stopped at the light, and he came right over,” Peter recalled. “He was 6-foot, thin.”
“Get out of the car!” the crook barked at Anne, who stands 5-foot-3 on her tiptoes.
The creep then forced down the window on the driver’s side — and stuck his long arm in the car.
“He used a knife to cut my hand” and then swiped Anne’s iPhone, she said.
Things went from ugly to ridiculous by the time the light changed, the couple recalled — and the would-be carjacker’s luck ran out.
“I said, ‘I’m OK — I’m going to get out of the car, ‘ ” Anne recalled, her hand stinging from the knife wound.
“She kicked him,” her proud spouse reported.
But the best revenge was yet to come.
“I’m small — he cannot fit in my car,” she said.
“And I don’t think he could drive the stick shift!”
So, stolen iPhone in hand and his tail between his legs, the driving-challenged car thief took off on foot.
“I think this shouldn’t happen at all,” Peter complained.
“The police should be running around more — it’s the Upper East Side after all.
“There should be more lights on the streets, it’s so dark sometimes.”
The couple said the moral of their story is simple:
“We live in New York — we have to watch out for each other!” Peter said.
Anne agreed.
“We have to be more cautious in the future,” she said.
But the couple said even in the midst of their woes, there were some high points.
“The police, they took us to the precinct, they are good, they try to help a lot,” Anne said.
And, Peter said, it was nice that a stranger bothered to help out.
“A nurse came — she came to look at her hand,” he said.