Mugging

After seeing a movie New Years Day eve and grabbing some dinner, I was the victim of a mugging/attempted robbery while walking home just past 11pm. Now I’ve lived in NYC all my life (give or take a few years) and this has never happened to me. I’ll let you read into what I think that says about the NYC of now... Anyway, I was walking on the LES when all of sudden someone seemed to be walking directly behind me. I noticed him out of the corner of my eye as one does but before I could think of changing my direction I was grabbed from behind and spun around by an imposing guy wearing all black and a mask covering half his face. He told me to “be quiet” and “hand over (my) wallet”. I was stunned but I was not about to hand him a damn thing, and I said as much to his face. I then somehow managed to wriggle myself out of his grasp while protesting, even though he looked like he was winding up to punch me, and I pushed him away. He said something to me (which I can’t recall) and I bolted. I turned back in mid run to see him reach into his jacket pocket, so I ducked as I ran and zigzagged in the event he had a gun. Thankfully he wasn’t carrying but it sounded like he sprayed something (mace?) albeit too late obviously. I ran into a restaurant and called 911, the people at the counter there were really helpful and asked if that was him now standing on the corner. He’d followed me it seems but didn’t know which place I’d ducked into. He stuck around almost a minute looking left and right before splitting. The cops then showed up and we drove around looking for him, but nada. After that I did all the requisite stuff at the local precinct with some on the ball detectives and then walked home. It was almost a couple hours after the incident by then. Thankfully, I was unscathed and I lost nothing, just a couple hours.