A Long Island woman spent her 75th birthday in the hospital with broken bones and a punctured lung after a mob of illegal street vendors trampled her and her Vietnam vet husband while fleeing police in lower Manhattan.
Rosalyn Landsman and her husband, Martin, 79, were on their way to the Staten Island Ferry, hoping to visit the borough’s lighthouse museum, when the callous vendors plowed through them on Canal St. near Lafayette St. around 2 p.m. Wednesday.
“We were literally trampled. It was like a herd of bulls just running over us. Once we got knocked down, I mean, they literally ran on us,” Martin Landsman told the Daily News.
Disturbing video shows the vendors quickly pack up their merchandise and rush down the sidewalk on Canal, never stopping, nor seeming to care, the Landsmans were walking along the same sidewalk.
“I have four broken ribs. And my lung was punctured, and I have a broken clavicle. And I had a cut on my forehead, five stitches,” said. Rosalyn, a retired speech and language therapist for the city school system.
“I am in pain I have some pain pills and I haven’t taken it yet, but I’m very, very uncomfortable. I can’t breathe deeply, and if I cough it’s terrible,” she added. “Sometimes I’m still feeling dizzy. If I move too quickly, the room starts to spin like crazy.”
Her husband, a former hospital administrator, suffered a pulled ankle.
“The police told me that at least three people stepped on [Rosayln], which is why she ended up with all of these breaks. It’s terrible, terrible,” he said.
The footage shows the couple splayed on the ground, not moving for several seconds as the vendors run past. None of them turn back to check on the couple as Martin pulls himself up and crawls to Rosalyn, the footage shows.
“We were actually walking hand in hand, and I didn’t hear anything behind me. I didn’t see any indication of any type of activity,” Martin Landsman said. “We were just walking to the subway, and the next thing I know, … I blacked out also, and I literally thought maybe a building fell on me or something collapsed on me.”
He added that he counted about eight seconds on the video before he got up. Rosalyn said she was knocked unconscious.
“I said, ‘Oh my God, where’s Ros?’ And I looked around and I saw her five, six feet in front of me, and I started to crawl over. We were totally blindsided,” he said.
Cops have released photos of five suspects, but have so far made no arrests. Police are asking anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.
On Thursday, NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Operations Kaz Daughtry tweeted about the incident, posting a picture of Rosalyn Landsman in the hospital with two officers.
“Yesterday, your Community Response Team approached 4 unlicensed vendors who then fled on foot. They crashed into Mrs. Landsman, knocking her unconscious,” Daughtry wrote. “Det. Graham and Det. Brandefine quickly rendered aid, and she was transported to Bellevue Hospital. The detectives visited her today—she’s in good spirits and will be discharged soon.”
The couple both grew up in Queens, and moved to Roslyn Heights about 47 years ago, but still make regular trips to Manhattan, where their son lives.
That day, Martin said, they wanted to visit the National Lighthouse Museum on Staten Island.
“It was a beautiful, sunny, nice day. We said, ‘Let’s take a trip on the Ferry’,” he recounted.
“‘Let’s do something different’,” Rosayln said she recalls saying. “There’s a lighthouse museum and I thought we’d go there.”
She doesn’t know if she’ll make the trip to the museum after she recovers.
“All things considered, I’m not bad,” Rosalyn said. “Would I go down there again? Yeah, but I would be looking around much more cautiously. I’m very disappointed, besides being hurt. This is my city. We grew up here and now it’s a different place.”
Martin, meanwhile, said the experience has left him frustrated and angry the city “let parts of the city turn into little flea markets on the sidewalk.”
“This was totally uncalled for, that people are literally willing to run over you to protect an illegal pocketbook. I mean, how do you have a city like that? Where’s the political will to say this is just unacceptable?” he asked.
“I am a Vietnam vet. I was a platoon leader in Vietnam. I don’t want to dramatize my military experience, but I was a real combat guy, and this experience has really affected me,” he said. “They have to take better care of just the citizens of the city…. We’re just two average people walking on the sidewalk. If you don’t trip over these guys, you’re getting run over by police activities. You got to do better.”