Four Arrested as Man "Slaps Soul Out of Girl" on New York City Subway [Video]
An early-morning kerfuffle on the New York City subway on Saturday ended in four arrests and a viral Internet video, the New York Daily News reported. A fellow rider's cell phone camera caught the altercation between two passengers, whom police identified as 21-year-old Danay Howard and 25-year-old Jorge Peña.
Howard is seen and heard making fun of Peña's red, white, and black leather jacket and a fur hat. "You got a bum ass eight ball jacket that came out in 1990," she says at one point. The woman then proceeds to attack the man with a leopard print high-heel, the newspaper detailed.
After first taking Howard's taunt in stride, Peña eventually loses his nerve and audibly slaps Howard; moments later, the scene disintegrates into an all-out brawl on the subway car.
The incident occurred as the Washington Square-bound F train was pulling into W. Fourth St. station at about 5 a.m. Saturday morning, NBC 4 New York detailed.
"(Howard) got smacked, and that echoed through the entire subway," David Ratliff, the man who shot the cell phone video, told the network. "I heard it. Everybody on the train heard it. Everybody in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx heard it."
Ratliff's video, creatively titled "Man smacks the soul out of girl on the N.Y. subway," meanwhile, went viral. By Tuesday afternoon, it had accumulated more than 3 million hits on YouTube.
"This is crazy, insanity," Ratliff, who was in town visiting from Chicago, told NBC. "It's mind-blowing. We were just out here for the weekend."
For Howard and Peña, though the week began in a more troublesome way: Police charged the man with misdemeanor assault and the woman with felony assault, according to the New York Daily News. Howard incurred the stiffer charged because of the use of a weapon - her shoe.
Two more riders involved in the brawl - 21-year-old Kevin Gil and 20-year-old Shanique Campbell - are accused of misdemeanor assault, as well, the Gothamist noted. All four individuals, meanwhile, additionally face disorderly conduct charges.
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