Stranger Assaulted by Maniac Weeks Before He Pushed Retired NYC Teacher to Death Recounts Frightening Attack: ‘Why Is He Following Us?’

A 23-year-old woman recounted the terrifying subway attack she suffered at the hands of the same recidivist madman accused of fatally shoving a retired Big Apple teacher down a flight of stairs hours after being released from a psych ward.

The horrified victim told The Post she and a friend were on a subway in Manhattan on April 2 when Rhamell Burke approached them and began a conversation they quickly shut down before frantically trying to switch cars to get away from him.

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“He comes up and he kicks my friend in the back, and basically pushes him through the transition of the cars,” the woman said in a phone interview Friday night.

“My friend freaks out, runs away, and then he grabs me by the head and pushes my head down, trying to like maybe throw me on the ground or something. But I didn’t, I resisted as much as I could. I didn’t fall, and then I immediately opened up the car and then ran towards my friend.”

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“We started running a little bit, but then thank God the cops were right there because, I mean, we kept thinking about, imagine that there were no cops, we would have had to literally run for our lives. They immediately arrested him. It was shut down really fast by the cops and we respected that.”

She said the attack left her and her friend “in shock,” but they ultimately chose not to cooperate with prosecutors — a decision she now regrets after Burke was charged with murder on Friday for allegedly hurling 76-year-old stranger Ross Falzone to his death at a Chelsea subway station Thursday night.

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“I regret it 100% and I actually feel really bad that a man lost his life,” the woman said.

“Maybe a part of me was just like, I don’t want to put another black man in jail, but, you know, at some point, if you are a criminal, you’re a criminal, and he was scary, he was a scary guy.”

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