The BMW driver whose ride was surrounded and destroyed by a gang of cyclists on Fifth Avenue was attacked in broad daylight while riding with his elderly mother – who during their escape shouted, “We’re dying, they’re going to kill us!”
Max Torgovnick, 36, talked about the poignant showdown with The Post a day after it unfolded on 21st Street and Fifth Avenue at around 4pm Tuesday.
“It’s something I never expected to happen in New York City,” said Torgovnick, a lifelong city resident. “It’s like you would see on the streets of a war zone. I never thought New York would get this bad. “
Torgovnick and his mother had just made a donation to Housing Works – a nonprofit that helps fight homelessness and the AIDS crisis – and were on their way to his father’s neurology office when they encountered an estimated 50 teenage bikers, said Torgovnick.
“I slowed to let them pass, but then they started surrounding the car on either side, and one of the bikers did a wheelie and went in the back of my car,” said Torgovnick. “I stopped to make sure no one was hurt.”
Then the group started pounding on the car with their fists, feet, and even bicycles, trying to yank the doors open, shouting, ‘Get out! Get out! ”Said Torgovnick and wanted video of the incident.
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“All I was thinking about was that incident a few years ago on the West Side Highway,” Torgovnick said, referring to an incident in 2013 where a gang of motorcyclists beat up a man who was riding with his family, causing him fear through them. drove. for his own safety.
Finally, a cyclist jumped on the car and jumped on the windshield, causing it to partially collapse.
“At the time, I was worried they would break the window, get in the car, grab in and get us out,” Torgovnick said of himself and his mother, who is in her 70s. “My only thoughts at the time were self defense, [that] I wanted to protect my mom and I didn’t want to hurt anyone. “
All this time his mother was frantically calling the emergency number.
“She screamed, ‘We’re going to die, they’re going to kill us,’” Torgovnick recalls.
Torgovnick eventually “found an opening” through the blockage of bicycles and drove a few blocks to safety.
Police are looking for the perpetrators, who similarly attacked at least one other vehicle, a yellow taxi, around the same time and location.
In the aftermath of the nightmarish encounter, Torgovnick said he got to see the good side of the city he calls home.
“The police were incredibly reassuring,” said Torgovnick, noting that they took his mother to his father’s office while kind-hearted strangers waited for a tow truck with him. That’s the other thing about New Yorkers. They are very helpful. “