Shocking surveillance footage shows a woman being viciously assaulted by a homeless man in a Queens subway station after ignoring him on a train, police said Monday.
The attack happened just after 5 a.m. Sept. 20 as the 33-year-old victim tried to exit the northbound A train at the Howard Beach stop without engaging with the vagrant, cops said.
The suspect, 41-year-old Waheed Foster — who has two prior busts for attacking women — then chased the woman off the train, attacking her near the subway entrance, cops said.
The sickening footage shows Foster throwing the woman into the wall before repeatedly punching and kicking her on the ground, cops said.
At one point, the video captures another straphanger trying to jump in to help the woman, but Foster chases him away.
Foster, who has two other pending criminal cases on charges of criminal mischief and minor theft, was arrested shortly after on multiple felony-assault charges, court records show.
Judge Denise Johnson ordered Foster held without bail during his arraignment, records show.
Foster was arrested in 2010 for stabbing a 50-year-old woman in the cheek and shoulder, police sources said.
He has a total of seven prior arrests, including busts for assaulting a woman with a screwdriver, criminal mischief, robbery and larceny, the sources said.
Foster’s latest victim was treated at Jamaica Hospital and is expected to recover, cops said.
The disturbing assault comes as transit crime has soared more than 43 percent so far this year compared to the same period in 2021, according to the latest NYPD statistics.
There were 1,165 crimes reported in the city transit system for the period last year compared to 1,670 this year, the figures show.
Statistics indicate that straphangers are more likely to fall victim now than before the pandemic — although NYPD brass last week insisted that the press is to blame for the “perceptions” of danger.
Some of the latest incidents of city subway violence include the random slashing of a 30-year-old tourist from Belgium earlier this month. The brazen attack by a roving band of assailants at a Chelsea station stunned even New Yorkers.
“It was 9 o’clock in the morning, It’s a very populated area. Criminals are getting bolder,” a female rider told The Post at the time.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona