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The straphanger battered in a brutal hammer attack at a Manhattan subway station Tuesday night says New Yorkers have had it with the out-of-control transit violence.
“We’re trying to live our lives as well as we can, you know, and it’s just unfortunate that we have to face all these adversities, along with just all the struggles in life,” the 29-year-old victim told The Post on Wednesday. “It’s just unnecessary conflict and it sucks.”
“It’s unfortunate, you know, the city is the way it is,” he added. “Obviously, something has to happen, something has to change.”
The victim spoke shortly before police nabbed his alleged attacker Wednesday farther west on the 14th Street subway line, sources said.
Christian Jeffers, 48, who identifies as a woman, was spotted by a transit cop shortly after 2 p.m. and charged with second-degree assault.
Police said the cop saw Jeffers jumping the turnstile at the station and took her into custody — with a hammer recovered from her bag.
The victim, who did not want to be identified, said he was returning home from dinner with a friend when he bumped into his deranged attacker at the 14th Street-Union Square station around 9 p.m. Tuesday.
“He ended up bumping into me and then after that, he turned around trying to get into my face pretty aggressively, and in that kind of process he ended up stepping on me,” the victim said. “He stepped on my foot and then after that, he took out the hammer and then I was hit on the head.
“I didn’t see the hammer. I just saw him reaching into a bag, pulled something out,” he continued. “It happened, like, too quick for me to react.”
Cellphone footage shot by his pal shows the assailant, in a wig and wearing a red jacket with the letter “B” emblazoned on it, yelling at the victim before striking him once on the side of the head with the hammer.
“Why you hit me?” the attacker yells, according to the video. “Why the f–k you hit me?”
The straphanger hits the ground and the brute runs off. He remains on the loose.
“It wasn’t painful,” the victim recalled. “I felt a lot of blood running down the side of my head. I was kind of just shocked and dazed a little bit and trying to process at that time.”
The victim suffered a cut to the head and was treated at Bellevue Hospital.
But even though his injuries were minor, he wants his attacker to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
“I want to get him locked up because he was pretty aggressive,” he said. “He was looking for trouble.”
The attack comes amid a months-long spike in Big Apple transit violence. Last week, a 68-year-old woman was slashed at the Union Square station in an unprovoked attack.
Last month, a 57-year-old city health worker was bludgeoned in another hammer attack at a Queens subway station — one of at least three random acts of violence in a few hours.
As of Sunday, city transit crime had spiked by more than 80 percent over the same period last year, with 428 total crimes compared to 236 last year, the latest NYPD statistics show.
The biggest jumps have come in grand larcenies, up to 201 incidents this year compared to 85 over the same time span in 2021. Robberies have nearly doubled from 118 to 60 last year, and 103 felony assaults have been recorded so far this year, compared to 85 during the same period in 2021.
“It’s hard because if we have to be afraid or just be constantly aware, be afraid of anyone who is passing by you and just, you know, who knows what they have, it’s not really a way to live,” the victim said.
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