An 11-year-old girl in the Bronx fought off a stranger who tried to grab her as she walked home from school in Mott Haven around 6 p.m. this week, after it was already dark out. The suspect remains at large.
The girl, Fatima, had become separated from her older brother when a man walking in the opposite direction approached her and began asking personal questions, including where she lived and whether she was 18.
“As soon as I passed him a little bit, he started asking questions,” Fatima said. “Where did I live, if I was 18.”
She said no and tried to walk away, but the man came at her again, this time asking for a hug.
“He was like, ‘can I have a hug?’ I was like, ‘no, no thank you,'” Fatima said.
He asked a second time. When she didn’t answer, he grabbed her.
“I didn’t answer him the second time, so he grabbed me like hard,” she said, demonstrating how he gripped her wrist.
Fatima pulled her hand free, shoved him and ran. “I felt very nervous and shocked. I was scared,” she said.
Her mother, Fatoumata Jaiteh, said Fatima “was able to pinch him on the hand, get free and run back to her brother and then they went back to the school,” where the dean called police. Jaiteh described the man as “a total stranger.” He was caught on surveillance footage, but authorities have not made an arrest.
Jaiteh said she was “panicked” when she learned what happened, because she survived a similar attempted kidnapping herself in high school.
“I know what it got me into, so I didn’t want my daughter to go through that and especially [on] her birthday,” Jaiteh said.
The attack happened on Fatima’s birthday. She still celebrated with cake that night, and went back to school the next day over her mother’s objections.
“She is one of those kids that don’t like to be absent from school. She was going [to] school, even though I told her to stay home with me for the day, she said no,” Jaiteh said.
Police are continuing to search for the suspect.
