A woman who was allegedly whacked with a leather belt by a homeless man in Midtown on Tuesday morning said she is “traumatized” after the random attack.
“I’m not going back to work until I know this guy’s put away,” Diamond Loubriel told The Post.
“I’m really traumatized, I can honestly say.”
Loubriel, 21, was sitting outside of her workplace, Black Seed Bagels on West 49th Street near Sixth Avenue, at around 7:45 a.m. when police say Kamal Walker came up from behind and hit her.
“I was sitting down on the phone talking to my sister and he just comes out of nowhere and starts attacking me,” Loubriel recalled.
“I didn’t even see him come towards me,” she continued. “He hit me and I looked up like and I’m like ‘what the f–k is going on?’”
The Alphabet City resident described how Walker allegedly was “putting all his manpower” into swinging the belt at her back.
“It was like if he was beating the f—k out of me,” she said.
Shocked, Loubriel said she tried to protect her face from the blows — until she finally gathered the strength to stand up.
But once she got up, the creep ran off.
“I got up and I was gonna f—ing do something and he just started running,” Loubriel recalled.
She added: “Well if you’re gonna hit me, threaten me, at least stay put. Give me a chance to f—ing defend myself.”
Police arrested Walker, 25, a short time later and charged him with two counts of assault.
Loubriel was treated on the scene and said that while her face was fine, her back was sore from the belt whips.
“It just made no sense to me,” she said of the unprovoked assault.
She even wondered whether her alleged attacker was “OK.”
Instead of returning to work at the bagel shop on Wednesday, she said she would go to the local precinct to make sure her alleged attacker hasn’t been released, and to look into filing a restraining order.
Just a month ago, Loubriel said she was threatened on the subway by a man who kicked her foot and said he was going to cut her face.
“A whole month later another situation happens where someone’s actually putting their hands on me,” she said in disbelief.
Additional reporting by Tamar Lapin