‘Manspreading’ passenger punches woman on New York subway

A woman was reportedly punched in the face after complaining to a man who was “manspreading” on the subway.

Sam Saia said she was on the N train on her way to work when a man sat next to her and spread his legs open. “He proceeded to press me against the wall and man spread me excessively,” Saia wrote in a Facebook post that included an image of her bloodied lip.

When she told him to move, Saia said he started shouting at her, using derogatory terms. “I told him to relax and put my earbuds in,” she said. “He yelled at me to not ignore him, called me a b*tch and c*nt again, and punched me in the face and banged my head against the wall.”

Saia said that fellow commuters came to her aid and that a man kicked the offender off the train. Later, Saia shared a video that another subway passenger, named as Anthony Macca, filmed showing the man confronting her assaulter. The video starts after the assault allegedly took place.

“The internet can be a beautiful thing!” she said. “I wanted to raise awareness for fellow Brooklyn gals about some lowlife who punched me in the face on the N train this morning, but didn’t get to see his face as it was covered by a scarf and hood. Someone got it on video, and caught when he’d pulled the scarf down. This is the ‘man’ who hit me on the N train this morning.”

The man who confronted the assailant said he was “off-duty” and grabbed the man’s arms, telling him to get off the train for hitting the woman. The man eventually apologized to the woman. The video ends before he gets off the train.  

“She said, ‘You hit me!’ And then I heard a loud bang to my left,” Macca told the NY Daily News. “The (good Samaritan) grabbed the other guy, I started recording.”

Saia told the New York Daily News that she went to report the assault to the 17th Precinct station but they told her to go to the Transit District 34 in Brooklyn, who told her she could report the incident at any station.