Metro

Female victims fighting back more against city muggers

By
Social Links for Dana Sauchelli ,
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Laura Italiano
Published Jan. 27, 2014, 4:09 a.m. ET
Arazeli Coello (left), who fought against a pervert who peered into her bathroom, and MaryJane Jarman (right) beat a mugger with a bike pump while jogging with her young son.
Arazeli Coello (left), who fought against a pervert who peered into her bathroom, and MaryJane Jarman (right), beat a mugger with a bike pump while jogging with her young son, are among the women fighting back against criminals. Kristy Leibowitz, Warzer Jaff

They’re fighting back with whatever they’ve got — a bike pump, a shampoo bottle or even just a loud scream.

“I just kept hitting him, thinking, ‘Get his head!’ Get his head!’ ” MaryJane Jarman remembers of swinging her bike pump at a mugger in an Inwood Park two months ago, leaving the brute to flee with a nasty gash.

“He definitely got it worse than I did,” remembers Jarman, one of at least 10 New York women in recent months to successfully fight off a male predator.

“Any time the police refer to me as a crime victim, it bothers me, because I wasn’t a victim,” said Jarman, 33, who was pushing her eight-month-old son in a stroller when the mugger attacked.

“Because I beat him,” she told The Post. “I wasn’t the victim — he was the victim.”

A seeming uptick in women confronting violent attackers is only anecdotal — the NYPD, which doesn’t tease out such statistics, can only say that slightly more women, 15,827, were victims of any kind of crime in New York City last year than in 2012, when 15,307 were victimized.

Recent instances of women confronting muggers and other brutes include:

  •  Deputy Comptroller Camille Joseph, who was mugged near City Hall on Jan. 15, chasing the suspect into City Hall Park and insisting he give her brown leather wallet back, police sources said.
  • Nervy Soho mugging victim Anna Graham had a gun held to her head by a thug in July but told the thief he didn’t “have the b—s” to shoot her. Fortunately for Graham, he didn’t.
  •  A Park Slope, Brooklyn, resident who was potty-training her 3-year-old child in November when she noticed a man peering into her bathroom window. “I started throwing everything I could find — cleaning supplies and shampoo — to get him away, the mom, Araceli Coello, 29, told The Post. “I was yelling, ‘Why are you doing this? I can see you! I’m going to call police!” she said of the creep, whom cops later found hiding in the basement.

Jarman, who has since ordered a bigger, heavier bike pump, nevertheless cautioned, “I do think if there’s a gun involved, you shouldn’t fight.”

She added, “But I think you should trust your instincts.”

That’s precisely what the experts advise.

“When a woman is fighting against a stranger, her instincts come into play and she will react in a self-preserving way,” said Susan Xenarios, for 40 years the director of the crime-victims treatment center at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital.

Still, Xenarios cautioned anyone against taking on violent, armed, attackers.

“These tend to be predators,” she said. “And predators are very prepared.”