Reports of a violent and disconcerting game teens in New York City are playing have surfaced in other cities, and even overseas.
The so-called "knockout game," which calls for participants to run up to a stranger on the street and deliver a single punch that leaves the victim facedown on the ground, has gained popularity amongst Brooklyn teens, according to CBS 2. It appears as though the attacks have targeted orthodox Jews specifically in the greater New York City area, but accounts from Pittsburgh, where a teacher was attacked, and London, where a teen was hit from behind, have suddenly began streaming in. On Tuesday afternoon, authorities informed CBS 2 that a 78-year-old woman in Midwood was "knocked out."
In the latest case, the victim's daughter said her mother was walking in the Brooklyn neighborhood when a young man walked right up to her and hit her with a closed fist on the top of her head. He ran off without trying to take any of the department store shopping bags or the purse that she was holding, indicating that the assault was not meant to be a robbery.
"She had her purse, she had bags from department stores," the victim's daughter told CBS. "There wasn't even an attempt to take anything from her. It was just a wanton act to hurt another human being."
Most of the reported attacks have occurred in the central Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights, and almost all of them involved Jewish people.
"It's a 'knockout,' and it happens to be a Jew in each and every case," Democrat State Assemblyman Dov Hikind said. "People think it's a fun thing to attack somebody - in this case, a person who's 78 years old."
The game was said to have started after a viral video on Vine depicted kids punching each other as part of the "knockout game."
Now, no potential victim is off limits - men, women, children and the elderly are all considered fair game by the assailants.
A 64-year-old man who asked to remain nameless said his 12-year-old son, was attacked on President Street in Crown Heights.
"One, full strength with his fist, whacked him, punched him, on the side of the face, full force," he said, adding that the child heard his attackers cry out, "A hysterical, happy shout, 'We got him!'"
New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly said that eight "knockout game" related incidents have been reported since the middle of September.
