Meng Dong (Jon Hyde)
BANGLE BANGER: Jewlery designer Dawnelle Josie Yager allegedly came out slugging when she got into a parking dispute in the Village with Meng Dong (right), who claims she punched him and hit him with an umbrella. (
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She’s a real gem.
A celebrity jeweler was arrested for beating a man with her umbrella in a vicious spat over a parking space in the West Village, authorities said yesterday.
Jeweler Dawnelle Joie Yager — whose clients include Kim Kardasian and Vanessa Hudgens — says the Christopher Street smackdown was nothing more than “a simple New York parking-spot freak-out.”
But her alleged victim, spa worker Meng Dong, 30 of Queens, said he was left with cuts and bruises from the designer’s meltdown.
“She said, ‘This spot is mine!’ . . . Then I got out of my car and — bam! bam! bam! — she hit me many times with her umbrella. It was very crazy,” Dong told The Post.
Yager, 42, has been charged with third-degree assault, attempted assault and harassment in the 11:30 a.m. incident last Thursday.
The designer yesterday told The Post she was just defending her territory on that rainy morning, after Dong tried to nose into a parking space.
“I was backing into the spot, and he shoved himself in head-on from the back,” claimed Yager, whose West 10th Street boutique, Soixante Neuf, is on the next block.
“He came out of nowhere, doing 100 miles an hour.
“I felt like I was in a ‘Seinfeld’ episode,” Yager said, referring to the famous TV episode where the George Costanza character fights with another driver over a spot.
“The police thought it was so funny that they pulled up the ‘Seinfeld’ episode on YouTube” back at the station house afterward, Yager claimed.
But not everyone was laughing.
According to a criminal complaint, Yager punched Dong in the chest and then hit him several times with her umbrella, leaving him with cuts on his arms, elbows and wrists.
Dong, who does manicures, pedicures and massages at a West Village men’s spa, said he was on his way to work when he saw the spot.
“There was a car in front of me that drove past the spot,” said Dong, referring to Yager and recalling that he then pulled into position and began to back into the space.
“Suddenly, [Yager] appeared at my door,” he said. “It was raining so my window was closed . . . She just opened my door and punched my chest with a closed hand’’ and allegedly bashed him with an umbrella.
Yager said, “I did not punch anyone. I never touched that guy.”
She said she was already “50 percent” into the spot when Dong tried to steal it from her.
“He pulled back his fist, and I swung my umbrella . . . My natural defense was to put my umbrella between us.”
Additional reporting by Jamie Schram and Laura Italiano