“I’m trying not to breastfeed outside anymore."
That’s the word from 39-year-old Elena Sobina, who was mugged at knifepoint in a Manhattan park on Oct. 30.
Her six month old, Kelly, had just fallen asleep while nursing around 5:30 p.m. in Washington Heights’s Fort Tryon park.
“I was very relaxed,” Sobina, who likes the neighborhood because of the quiet, leafy park, tells the New York Post. “I wouldn’t even think about anything like that. I had my phone in my right hand and then I felt somebody standing behind me very close. I turned my head and the guy grabbed my shoulder near my neck.”
Next thing she knew, she and Kelly were on the ground.
“I saw him from when I was on the ground and he had a knife in his right hand,” she says. “He started to come toward me and I started to scream, ‘Help me! Help me! He didn’t say anything, so I wasn’t sure what he wanted. I thought he wanted to kill me and the baby. So I started to scream to him, ‘Please take my money and the bag.’”
That’s exactly what the assailant did. Sobina put Kelly back in her stroller and took off, pausing to tell a good samaritan — who called 911 — what had happened.
By tracking Sobina’s iPhone, police were able to find and identify her attacker, 31-year-old Juan Garcia. Garcia’s been charged with robbery, criminal possession of stolen property and acting in a manner injurious to a child.
While the harrowing experience has lessened Sobina’s drive to breastfeed in public, she says it won’t scare her from moving out of the city.
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