SCARY: NY1’s Vivian Lee and “ill” Theresa Casivant yesterday. (
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In all her years on the job, she’s been groped, spat at, sexually assaulted, heckled and threatened.
But nothing prepared NY1 reporter Vivian Lee for getting violently and inexplicably pummeled in the throat yesterday — by a deranged woman wrapped in a white bedsheet who wanted to wear her makeup.
“I felt very, very vulnerable,” the petite, raven-haired reporter told The Post from the emergency room at Long Island College Hospital. “I’ve been heckled, having people jump into the shot, having people touch you in a friendly or unfriendly way . . . You’re at the mercy of whoever is out there.”
“I’ve been sexually assaulted in Canada and New York,” she said. “It’s happened. It’s not pleasant. You wonder why people think you’re part of the furniture. You appear in their residence, on their television. You’re familiar.”
Lee and her crew had driven to Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, just after sunrise yesterday to report on the death of Richard Schwartz, a resident hit by falling bricks during Thursday’s storm.
They returned to the truck, parked at Clinton and Baltic streets, to find a stranger — Theresa Casivant, 24, now in custody — allegedly in the driver’s seat putting on Lee’s makeup. The stranger smelled faintly of feces.
“I thought maybe she was mentally ill,” said Lee, who has been with NY1 since 2008. “I just wanted her out of the truck.”
The truck operator had to wrap his arms around the woman’s torso to heave her out. Still, she wouldn’t go away.
“I said, ‘What is your issue? Are you lost? Are you homeless? Are you sick?’ ” That’s when Casivant slammed her in the neck with her wrist, Lee said.
“I just kept asking her, ‘Why would you hit me? Why would you strike? I didn’t touch you.’
“I’m not a print reporter; I need this voice box.”
Lee and her crew blocked the woman from wandering away until cops came. Lee is planning to start self-defense classes. TV camera lights, she noted, can attract all kinds of passersby.
A drunken man groped her outside Penn Station in fall 2011, right as she was being counted down to go live, Lee said.
“I’m so thankful my crew was there, but I won’t always be with them when I’m covering a story.
“What if they don’t like the look of me? They can tell a TV reporter immediately. I’m made up to high heaven,” she said.
“Today has shown me how important it is to use some basic self-defense techniques.”