by This sick person picked the wrong jogger to grope.
A tough-as-nails New York University softball player bravely knocked down a creep who grabbed her breasts while she was jogging in Chelsea last week — hitting him so hard she broke her hand.
The 6-foot-2 Iowan ran around 20th Street near Eighth Avenue at 4:30 p.m., a path she has run almost every day since moving to the Big Apple a year ago from Bettendorf, a small town about 200 miles from Des Moines. .
“As I was crossing the street, I saw him reach out for me, and he grabbed my breast and wouldn’t let go. My fight or flight began,” Alexa Very told The Post of the terrifying September 19 episode.
She chose to fight.
The second-year first baseman, 19, hit the bald, middle-aged forward twice in the jaw.
He fell to the ground and let her escape.
A grand slam.
“The only thing I could think at that moment was that I had to do everything I could to prevent it from going any further. I had to protect myself,” she recalls.
“I don’t think he expected me to punch him,” she proclaimed proudly.
Very didn’t know if the creep said anything during the attack, as Toby Keith’s “Should Have Been a Cowboy” blasted into her AirPods.
It took a few adrenaline-fueled minutes before she realized her right hand was throbbing and her knuckles were bleeding.
Heel said she called her father “to ask if I did the right thing because I can’t hold a bat right now.
“And he told me that was the best reason not to be able to hold the bat or throw a softball for a while.”
An NYU trainer cleaned Very’s battered hand and referred her to the emergency room, where a doctor found two bone bruises and a hairline fracture.
Very’s hand is still in a splint and despite her heroics, she is struggling emotionally.
“I find myself feeling a lot more paranoid after what happened,” she said this week, adding that she has not been able to sleep through the night since the attack.
On Wednesday, a random man walking toward her on the sidewalk was enough to send her into a panic attack, she said, preventing her from attending classes for the rest of the day.
Very has found refuge on TikTok, where she has posted videos about the incident and her healing journey.
“Holy wow. I’m so glad you’re safe and being a total badass,” reads a reply to her post, which has racked up more than 3,000 “likes.”
“I never thought something like this would happen to me, but I was wrong. So if I could help one person become more aware that this could happen to them — and that it’s okay to fight back and protect yourself — then it would have been worth it,” she told The Post .
Very, who filed a police report after the attack and spoke with detectives from the NYPD’s Special Victims Unit, “hopes” the police will catch the creep.
As of Friday, no arrests had been made in the case.
An NYPD spokesperson said the department “takes cases of sexual assault and rape very seriously.”
Additional reporting by Tina Moore.
