Metro

Central Park pedicabby punched me: nurse

She was taken for a ride — and then knocked for a loop.

A Manhattan nurse told The Post she was decked by a pedicab driver when she refused to pay his jacked-up price for a 1-minute ride.

The alleged victim said she was boating in Central Park with a friend on Saturday afternoon — after which the pair hailed a $3-a-minute rickshaw to go from the Loeb Boathouse to the East 72nd Street entrance about a quarter of a mile away.

It was her first time in a pedicab, she said, and the two abandoned the trip when the driver said he had to take a different route.

The 33-year-old nurse tried to pay driver Mahamadou Soumano $3.50 for the “minute” they were in the cab, but he insisted they owed him $15.

When the women got out, he allegedly cursed her our and slugged her.

“He punches me, boom,” the victim said, sporting a reddish bruise above her left cheek. “He clocks me right in the head. I’m a little feisty, but he got me.”

The stunned passenger was going to let it go — until he followed them while talking on his cellphone.

Soumano, 30, eventually pedaled back to his post when a couple intervened, and the nurse called police.

“Once the bike guy saw we were with this couple, he backed off,” the nurse said. “He can’t get away with this. You can’t just punch a girl.”

She said that when she went back to the scene with police, the man was sitting on his pedicab, “like nothing happened.”

Soumano was arrested and charged with third-
degree assault.

He claims his passenger is pedaling up the wrong path.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Soumano said. “I let them go and I took no money. That’s when I called the police and they started to run away.

“I told them, ‘I know you. When I ever see you in the park again, I’m going to call the police. I was angry. I told her she’s an a–hole, that she’s a f—-ng bitch, but I never touched her.”

Soumano’s friend and fellow pedicab pusher, Salim Diarra, said his pedaling pal is only at the park part time because he is a student — in economics.

“I’ve never seen him angry like that,” Diarra said. “He’s quiet, he’s happy, he has a good sense of humor.

“Sometimes, the customer doesn’t pay. But most of the time, I accept the money they give me.”