9-year-old slugged by madman in Grand Central no longer smiles, too afraid to go outside: ‘I’m scared’
A 9-year-old girl slugged in the face by a deranged homeless man at Grand Central Terminal is now too afraid to go outside — and has even stopped smiling, she and her mom told The Post.
“I’m scared that something like this will happen to me again,” Kimberly Tapia said in Spanish, clutching her mom in their Mott Haven, Bronx, apartment.
“I’m scared and I don’t want to be happy anymore,” the third-grader said. “What if someone else does something bad to me again?”
Mom Juana Tapia and Kimberly were in the historic station’s dining concourse April 13 when, out of the blue, Jean Carlos Zarzuela — who was freed without bail just days earlier after allegedly slugging a woman in the same station — hit the girl on the right side of her face and head, cops said.
The mom had just bought Kimberly a cookie and a croissant and was walking behind her daughter with a cousin.
“I was putting the money in my pocket and all of the sudden my cousin said, ‘Kimberly, what happened?’ and she had fallen to the ground,” recalled the 36-year-old mom. “She said, ‘Mama, mama, my head hurts so much.’”
“Then, another woman came and she said, ‘A man hit her,'” the mom recalled. “So we picked her up. She was crying.”
The 150-pound, 30-year-old goon struck the 4-foot-8, 100-pound child so hard her face was red and swollen, the mom said.
She also had bruises on her body from falling.
Zarzuela was caught on surveillance video fleeing the Midtown station, and MTA Police tracked him to the Lexington Avenue-125th Street station in East Harlem, cops said.
The station is near a homeless shelter where Zarzuela lived.
Zarzuela had been freed without bail after allegedly punching a Queens resident at the same station on April 4, documents show.
Initially jailed on $2,500 bail that day, Zarzuela was later released on his own recognizance.
The April 4 victim, the 54-year-old woman who asked for anonymity out of fear for her safety, was on her way to work, walking through a crowd in the station when the brute punched her in the face in front of the Swatch store.
“I just fell on my knees and there was all blood coming out of my mouth and my nose,” she said. “It was very shocking. It was literally the rush hour in the morning. I thought I was in a safe place in Grand Central.”
She said she only returned to work two days ago and is now only working from home.
“I wish [Kimberly] doesn’t have trauma in her life in the future, because, you know, she’s so young,” she said. “I really feel bad for her.”
Kimberly’s mom, who came to the U.S. from Mexico in 2006, is also worried about the attack’s emotional impact on the girl.
“Now she doesn’t want to leave the house,” the mom said. “She doesn’t smile, she doesn’t laugh. Before she was always smiling and she was active.”
Zarzuela remains in Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward on $100,000 bond, records show.
