A stranger in a “Darth Vader-like mask” repeatedly punched and stabbed a 26-year-old woman in the back in an unprovoked attack inside Brooklyn’s Prospect Park last week, sources said – leaving the victim “angry” that she has to worry for her safety in the city.
Avery Catherine Lorio – a dietician originally from Arkansas by way of California — told cops she was jogging on South Lake Drive near the tennis courts inside the iconic greenspace around 5:15 a.m. on Sept. 17 when the menace approached her, slugged her multiple times and plunged something into her back, the sources said.
“I did hear screaming in the park from a woman, and so I thought about turning around, but I didn’t. I figured, ‘Oh, it’s far away enough, I’m fine,’” Lorio told The Post by phone. “But then I see this guy walking towards me, and then he just gets too close to me.”
“I mean, it could have been a girl, I actually don’t know. But it was a Darth Vader-like mask all black, and he just started hitting me,” she said.
“After a few punches, I told him to ‘F–k off, leave me alone,’ and he just ran away,” Lorio said.
The attacker, who was wearing the creepy face mask, black hoodie and black pants, fled after the random ambush, according to the sources.
Lorio didn’t realize she was stabbed until she noticed some blood and found the puncture wound, she said.
She went on her own to SUNY Downstate Medical Center — where she had been working as a dietician for about a week — and was treated for her injury, the sources said.
Lorio initially tried to report the attack to cops the next day, but ultimately decided to wait because police needed hospital discharge papers to prove she was stabbed — which carries a weightier criminal charge than assault without a weapon, she said.
She thought she’d lost the papers — before realizing she could use her employee access to pull up her chart in the hospital’s system, which showed that she was diagnosed with a “puncture wound.”
“I thought that would classify as a stabbing, or show the police that it was a stabbing so that if they were to catch the guy they would charge him harder or just [give them] more an impetus to find him basically.”
She walked into the NYPD’s 78th Precinct on Thursday to report the random assault.
Lorio — a Brooklynite for about a year-and-a-half who plans to take on the New York City Marathon in 2026 — said she lives about 30 minutes from the greenspace and tries to make it there for a run at least once a week.
The attack has forced Lorio, who also works at New York Common Pantry as a public health nutritionist, to alter her schedule, she said.
“I’ve kind of adjusted my routine so I’m running in the afternoon, in the middle of the day, right after work, instead of running when it’s still dark outside…. which, you know, kind of makes me angry, that I feel unsafe,” Lorio said.
“People shouldn’t go around hitting other people or stabbing other people,” she said. “I want to feel safe.”
No arrests had been made in connection to the attack by Friday, but Lorio said the NYPD investigators have been “really great.”
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“It’s hard because we don’t know what he looks like, or she,” Lorio said. “We know they had the mask, but we don’t have a good physical description.”
“I hope he gets caught so this doesn’t happen again,” she added. “I still want to be able to run at 5 in the morning if I want to. I want to be able to live my life the way I want to. I guess that’s my hope.”
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