A mother waiting to pick up her daughter from a Lower Manhattan dance class had her brand-new car stolen by a brazen trio just blocks from federal court and City Hall, according to police and the victim.
The 44-year-old woman, who asked not to be identified, was parked at Broadway and Reade streets around 8 p.m. Tuesday, waiting for her 11-year-old daughter to finish class at a nearby dance school, when the heartless crew rushed up to her Audi, which she had left running.
“All of a sudden, my door opens… the back door on my side, and also the passenger door,” the woman told The Post by phone. “And at first, I thought it was my daughter, [but it was] too soon.”
“And I look up and see a man in a mask and he just told me to get out,” she said.
The 44-year-old mom was waiting to pick up her 11-year-old daughter from dance class when she was carjacked at the corner of Broadway and Reade streets.
By that moment, the Brooklyn resident, who works in financial services in Midtown, realized she was in serious danger.
“I said, ‘Oh my God,’” she said. “I immediately kind of figured out what was happening….I didn’t see the other faces. I only saw him, and I was like, ‘OK.’”
“I grabbed my bag, grabbed the key, and I got out, stood on the corner of the street, and I started screaming for help…that I was being carjacked,” she recalled.
Two good Samaritans ran over to help, with one calling 911 while the victim contacted her husband.
But the thieves quickly realized the woman still had the car key and demanded she hand it over, prompting her to throw it into the street.
“I kind of wanted to throw it in the middle of Broadway, so maybe it will be crushed by a car, so I threw it far,” she said. “But they got it and then they just drove off.”
The suspects later abandoned the brand-new Audi miles away in Canarsie, police said.
Officers from the NYPD’s 1st Precinct arrived in less than a minute and placed the victim in their cruiser to search for the suspects, but they were unable to find them. Police then brought her back so she could pick up her daughter, she said.
Officers drove both mother and daughter home and eventually located the unoccupied vehicle around 10:20 p.m. in Canarsie, Brooklyn, according to police and the victim.
But the Audi, which she had owned for just two weeks, was completely totaled.
“It’s not drivable,” she said. “When they found it, it looked OK – it just had a dent, but [the suspects] completely destroyed the entire suspension.”
Despite the ordeal, the shaken mother said she was thankful that no one was injured.
“I was very shaken that this could happen when there’s so many people walking around, where it’s presumably a safe area, and they just are so brazen to do that [when] there’s a lot of police presence around there too,” she said.
She added that she would not change anything about the police response, which she described as “just incredible.”
“I don’t know what all they could be doing [differently],” she said. “I think this was done by what seemed like professionals and probably targeting a woman who they, I assume, won’t fight back.”
As of Wednesday, no arrests had been made, police said.
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