Straphanger sucker-punched by subway creep: My plan backfired

The fearless Brooklyn woman who was sucker-punched by a wacko after she tried to stop him from harassing straphangers on the subway told The Post on Friday she was planning to distract the creep — and ended on the receiving end of his madness.

The 52-year-old college professor, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear for her safety, said it wasn’t the first time she intervened when seeing crazies on the subway acting badly, but in the past other passengers stepped up to help out.

But when she used the same method while on her way home from work on a No. 5 train shortly before 7:15 p.m. on March 21, the only person that stepped up was the lunatic, and she ended up with a knuckle sandwich.

After seeing the brute bother two women on a train, she got up and told him a thing about subway etiquette as the train rolled into her stop at Church Avenue.

“You can’t talk to people like that,'” she said.

No one got up to help, and he followed her off the train, through the station and to the exit stairs, where video released by police shows he hustled up to the street level and turned around to face her, all while spewing curse words.

“I thought he was just rambling to himself,” she said. “When I got up onto the sidewalk, he said, ‘Now I can hit you.’

“Next thing I know, I’m on my knees and my nose is bleeding.”

The victim asked a passerby to call police and was treated by EMS at the scene.

While cops initially said she suffered a broken nose, she said she only suffered soreness for about a week — after that, she “kind off brushed this off.”

Police are still looking for the woman’s attacker, who is described as approximately 20 to 30 years old with shoulder-length braids.