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The city health department scientist who was brutally battered with a hammer at a Queens subway station says she’s done riding the tube — and wants lenient state bail reforms “undone.”
“Unfortunately I remember basically the entire thing from start to finish,” Nina Rothschild told NBC News reporter Melissa Russo.
“Never saw my attacker but I remember starting to go down the subway steps and feeling this blow to my head, which I initially thought was a baseball bat,” said Rothschild, 57. “I kept yelling, ‘Stop, stop, stop.’ Which, of course, was fine but completely and utterly useless.”
Two cops on a lower platform heard Rothschild’s screams for help and came to her aid “very quickly,” she said during the exclusive interview, which aired Tuesday night.
She called the NYPD response “nothing short of miraculous.”
The day after the Feb. 24 caught-on-video attack at the Queens Plaza E, M and R station, police arrested William Blount, an ex-con who has a half-dozen prior arrests.
Blount, 57, is being held without bail at Rikers Island on attempted murder, robbery and other charges from the horrendous assault.
Blount has about a half-dozen prior busts for robbery and drug possession and served time behind bars in the 1980s for attempted sale of a controlled substance.
Police later arrested a second person, Denise Alston, for using the victim’s bank card.
In the wake of the horrific attack, Rothschild bemoaned the rise in crime in the Big Apple, calling the city “quite threatening.”
“I feel like every day somebody’s telling me about another assault,” she said.
Asked about New Yorkers fleeing the city, she said, “I think it’s very sad but it’s also completely understandable, and I can only hope that this wave of horror will come to an end.”
She also said the state’s soft-on-crime criminal justice reforms should be rolled back to keep violent criminals behind bars and off the streets.
While there is no indication that Blount had a pending case in which he dodged bail, she said the reforms have cut too many criminals loose.
“Personally, I’m not thrilled with the bail reform that went into effect that allowed people out onto the streets if they were not accused of a particularly violent crime,” Rothschild said. “They’re allowed out until the date of their trial.
“I would love to see that policy undone and people kept incarcerated until the date of the trial,” she added. “If you’re accused of a violent crime, whatever your race, your ethnicity, etcetera, I would like to see you incarcerated until the date of your trial.”
Rothschild said she rode the subways “seven days a week” before the assault — but now is reluctant to do so, even as she plans a return to work on May 1.
“Short term I do not plan to take the subway,” she said. “My colleagues at the health department, with extraordinary generosity, started a GoFundMe page and people have contributed to it at just the most in incredibly generous, generous contributions.
“And I will certainly use that for Uber rides to and from work when I’m sent to the office.”
She said she’s still unsteady on her feet at times and has on at least one occasion been spooked on the street, when a man walking near her stopped short.
Nonetheless, Rothschild said she feels fortunate and is anxious to return to work.
“When the physical and occupational therapists were asking me, ‘What were your goals?,’ I said, ‘Well, I want my life back,’” she told Russo. “And thanks to everybody’s help, I am taking my life back.”
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