Ahmed Khalifa, 17, a Muslim Midwood high school student, helped police capture a homeless man who viciously smacked the face of an Orthodox Jewish woman who was reading a book on a Coney Island-bound Q train near the Newkirk Ave. station around 7:50 PM Tuesday, the NY Daily News reported.
Khalifa, who works at the public library near Grand Army Plaza, chased the attacker, Rayvon Jones, 31, after the assault. “It was a very hard slap, I almost could feel the slap,” Khalifa told the Daily News. “He was 6-foot-6, and a very big, big guy.”
Khalifa said he was riding the Q home after working a shift, listening to music on his headphones. He suddenly saw the homeless man hit the woman. The smack broke the victim’s glasses, she dropped to the floor and became momentarily unconscious. She was taken to hospital with a cut lip and bruising. When she came to, she cried, “Why would he do this to me? Why would he do this to me?”
The attacker fled the train at Newkirk, and Khalifa yelled at the conductor to call for help. Then he took off after the man. He eventually lost him, and enlisted the help of an Orthodox man, who invited him into his car and the two of them tracked down the attacker. “We found him at the bus stop and called the Shomrim,” Khalifa told the Daily News.
A large number of Shomrim safety patrol members arrived to pick up the man, who was trying to escape on a bus. He became violent and screamed, “I’m going to kill all of you! I’m going to kill all of you!” Police eventually arrived and arrested him. Inside the police car, the homeless man kicked the doors hard enough so they wouldn’t open, the Daily News reported. He was charged with assault.