Minutes after beating and robbing a man of his cellphone and bus pass, a group of muggers
came back to their victim and returned the stolen items, telling him they were looking for someone else.
"I was surprised to be jumped like that," 63-year-old Sidney Tyson recalled Wednesday. "This is my neighborhood. This is somewhere that I feel safe."
Tyson said he was waiting for a bus at East 75th Street and South Shore Drive at about 8:20 Tuesday evening when five or six young men attacked him from behind as he started to make a call on his phone.
He fended them off with a cane he's used since having a series of strokes, but the robbers still made off with the phone and bus pass. Tyson said his cries for help went unanswered.
And then the muggers returned and gave Tyson his belongings.
"I figured they were coming back to finish off what they did," he said.
Police arrested three people a short time later after the same group apparently robbed a 45-year-old man of his wallet about a block away.
Tyson said he refuses to live in fear.
"The simple fact that these were young black men, wandering the street with nothing better to do than jump on a senior citizen and beat him down, it's sad," said Tyson.
