New York City Police are investigating a scuffle that happened on a subway train Thursday morning after a man kicked a woman who was nine months pregnant in the stomach.
The fight began when the man, Michael Lee, jostled the 28-year-old woman, who was holding onto a pole, and when Natasha Rodney pushed him away from her, he fell down. According to police, after Lee had fallen, he got back up and kicked her in the stomach twice.
“Most of the passengers, ‘what’s wrong with you? Are you crazy? She’s pregnant!'” said Janice, an eyewitness to the incident.
“He pushes her hand away and he ends up hitting her. He ends up hitting her arm or chest,” Janice said. “I think this is where she snapped, she ends up holding on to his collar, his back is still facing her so once she has her hands on his collar this is where she turns around and she ends, her hands end up on his head.”
Rodney was still holding onto him when the man fell, and it was then that he kicked her.
“So when she’s hunched over him, this is when he kicks her and the kick, since she’s over him diagonally, the kick lands on her stomach, right on the bottom of her belly,” Janice said.
A Good Samaritan then jumped in to shield the woman, and when the man got up, he told passengers that he had no idea the woman was pregnant.
Rodney’s mother is outraged that anyone would have done such a thing to a pregnant woman.
“She’s pregnant. You can see her stomach. Is he insane? I don’t care what argument they had,” Carol Rodney told the New York Daily News. “What if the baby is damaged? What if, God forbid?”
Lee has been charged with felony assault, misdemeanor assault and felony reckless endangerment.
Suspect accused of kicking a 9 month pregnant woman twice in the stomach on a crowded 4 train this morning in Lower Manhattan. pic.twitter.com/O7a8BIGoJb
— CeFaan Kim (@CeFaanKim) March 9, 2017