A tough-as-nails 90-year-old West Village woman stood her ground against a broad-daylight mugger on Tuesday — getting a nasty gash in her arm but keeping hold of her bag.
“No woman is going to attack me!” petite and plucky Gina Zuckerman told The Post, speaking a day after she was thrown to the pavement by her brazen, female purse-snatcher.
The mugger had the gall to tell a gathering crowd that she was Zuckerman’s home health aide — and that Zuckerman frequently fell — before fleeing empty-handed and leaving the elderly lady sprawled on the pavement, according to police sources.
“I wouldn’t give it to her. I fought her off. I was stronger than her,” boasted the feisty nonagenarian, who nonetheless suffered a deep cut on her right forearm, where the craven attacker dug her nails into her skin.
“I just screamed and held onto my bag,” she remembered. “I could not possibly let this woman get away with this.”
Zuckerman is one of the more than 300 mugging victims citywide over the age of 65 so far this year — the latest in a rash of predations on our oldest and most vulnerable citizens.
She lives in a prime location for senior strong-arm robberies. Manhattan South has seen nearly a 140 percent increase in these crimes so far this year over last year, according to NYPD stats.
Zuckerman was pounced on near her home at noon Tuesday, as she rolled her small pushcart along Fifth Avenue. She was taking her routine, five-block walk to her senior center at Fifth and Washington Square North, and had just reached the corner of Fifth and 11th Street.
Zuckerman, a retired advertising company worker, has lived in the neighborhood for 20 years.
“I stopped at 11th Street for the traffic,” she recalled.
“I was going to the senior center, and a woman attacked me from the back. She pushed me to the ground.”
When Zuckerman clung to her bag, which hung from her push cart, “She cursed at me: ‘You stupid idiot! You moron!’”
Still, Zuckerman kept hold of her bag — even as the craven mugger shoved her to the pavement.
“I only had $10 in it,” she said of the bag. “The money wasn’t important. But it was all my documents inside.
“I was scared,” she added. “She was a little taller than me, and bigger. I did everything I could to defend myself. But I didn’t hurt her — she hurt me. She dug her nails into my arm and made me bleed.
“I was operated on,” she said, displaying her gauze bandage. “I have five stitches in my right arm.”
She remembers screaming, “Help! Help!”
Passersby saw the mugger push the old woman to the ground, and a small crowd gathered, law enforcement sources told The Post.
“I heard someone say, ‘She’s bleeding! She’s bleeding,’” Zuckerman remembered.
The mugger then lied that she was the old woman’s home health aide, sources said — and that she falls down all the time.
“That is a lie!” Zuckerman told The Post, angrily. “She is not my home health aide. I have never seen the woman in my life.”
As two cops ran to the scene, the mugger fled, leaving the woman sprawled on the pavement.
“I would have gladly given her $5” had the mugger just asked, Zuckerman said. “But I was not going to be beaten for it.”
While the attempted purse-snatching has left her feeling scared, Zuckerman had this warning for any would-be mugger thinking of coming to her neighborhood: The “old ladies” of the West Village do not give up their bags without a fight.
“She should not come and look for anything [more] in our neighborhood,” Zuckerman said. “She should not come with the intentions to attack old ladies, because the old ladies will not let her come close to them.
“Me? She had little chance,” the tiny toughie added. “I could not possibly let this woman get away with this.”
