Katherine Marroquin fought off three masked attackers with her metal water bottle after they ambushed her during her nightly bike ride through Central Park.
The 32-year-old Bronx resident, who works maintenance on the Upper West Side, had stopped to retrieve dropped AirPods along the running path at East 90th Street and East Drive around 9:45 p.m. Sunday when the trio cornered her. The men demanded her belongings and began striking her repeatedly in the head, she said.
“I grabbed myself to the bike and I covered my head because they were hitting me hard,” Marroquin said.
The assailants snatched her phone from the front of her bike and threw it into the nearby lake, she recalled. While Marroquin remained on her bicycle wearing her backpack, the group grabbed the bag and tore through her possessions, continuing to hit and kick her.
Her Stanley water tumbler fell from the bag during the struggle, creating an unexpected weapon. “When I saw the cup, the first thing I did was like, ‘Well, they’re gonna kill me,’ so I grabbed the cup and I just randomly hit everywhere,” Marroquin said.
All three attackers fled on foot toward Fifth Avenue and remained at large Monday, according to police. Investigators believe the suspects are in their early twenties.
Marroquin lost her phone, wallet containing $80, credit cards, and Beats headphones in the robbery. She credited the metal tumbler with preventing a worse outcome. “I am thankful that I am OK,” she said, noting that some victims of similar crimes “get hit in the head and never wake up.”
The maintenance worker declined medical attention when officers arrived, despite visible injuries. “I just wanted to get home because my mom was worried, everybody was worried,” she said. She woke Monday with purple bruises on her face and hands. “Everything is hurting, I’m sore everywhere,” she said.
Marroquin had established a routine of biking home through the park for the past year specifically because she considered the subway unsafe. The born-and-raised New Yorker stopped taking the train from Manhattan to the Bronx due to safety concerns. “This was always a safe place,” she said of Central Park.
She returned to work Monday despite her boss offering the day off and her lingering pain. “I’m still going to bike,” Marroquin said. “I feel like I’m not safe on the train either. That’s one of the reasons I stopped taking the train.”
Marroquin argued the city needs stricter consequences for criminals rather than what she characterized as lenient punishment. “I feel like they deserve consequences, not just, ‘Oh yeah, one ticket and that’s it.’ Then they’re gonna keep doing it again,” she said.