NYC Nurse Who Recovered From COVID-19, Robbed, Beaten By Thugs On Her Way To Work

Martha Toscano, a 60-year-old nurse, working at Bellevue Hospital, has been on home quarantine for two weeks after she acquired COVID-19 infection. She has been granted permission to return to work after recovering from her illness. While on her way to work, she said about 15 youthful hooligans attacked her and beat her to the ground.

A Regular Shift

The New York nurse told The Post that she just got off the 6 train station, as she normally would during her regular work shift at Bellevue Hospital on Wednesday. She said that the time was around 10:30 p.m. Out of nowhere, the youths were all over her. In a phone interview from her Queens apartment Thursday, Ms. Toscano said, “I thought they were going to kill me.”

She also said that the youths hit her on the face and on her head. She tried to run away, but she fell down on the pavement, and the thugs continued on hitting her. The mugging only stopped when three men who happen to be driving by shouted at the youths to stop what they are doing. In the phone interview, Toscano recalled the men screaming, “Stop it, stop it.”

An Unexpected Help

According to Ms. Toscano, the good Samaritans then helped her to her feet and proceeded to run after the muggers to take back her purse. They did not catch the thugs, however. As for Ms. Toscano, she was very thankful the three men came along. “Thank God these angels came, because nobody was in the street, nobody,” she said.

In a follow-up operation on Thursday, the police arrested three of the alleged muggers, which reportedly included a 14-year-old and 15-year-old girl and Deshaun Harrison, a 19-year-old man. All of the three alleged assailants are residents of a group home nearby, which is run by New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS).

Sources revealed Harrison has a string of cases with the police, and his rap sheet is quite long. The police filed charges of robbery in the second degree against Harrison. When sought for comment, a spokeswoman for the ACS said the agency could not legally give comment on the matter.

Scrapes And Bumps

The newly-recovered coronavirus victim said her body sustained various scrapes and bumps, but she did not have any serious injuries. “I have pain in all my body,” Ms. Toscano said. “My back, my neck, bumps on my head, even on my elbows.” She broke into tears while narrating that her first day of work after recovering from COVID-19 was Sunday, and then this incident happened.

She told The Post that her three adult children have been begging her to stop working at the hospital because she might catch the deadly coronavirus, which she eventually did. Ms. Toscano, however, said that what made her ordeal truly painful was that after recovering from coronavirus infection, she was mugged and robbed. After checking out at Bellevue around 4 a.m., she had to call her apartment landlord as her keys, IDs, and credit cards, were all in the purse the thugs took.