Irish victim of Bronx assault, Alisha Jordan, recovers after surgery

Brave Meath woman had ten metal plate put in her head after violent attack

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MOLLY MULDOON,

Irish Voice Reporter

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Alisha Jordan

Photo by Hogan Stand

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Alisha Jordan is constantly reminded of her horrific encounter with a random attacker on Katonah Avenue in Woodlawn in July every time she sees her reflection. A red scar stretches across her eyebrows and she has little to no feeling in her forehead where a plastic surgeon has inserted ten metal plates.

Despite this, six weeks on from the frenzied attack, the 20-year-old’s spirits are high.

“I am feeling much better,” Jordan, originally from Skryne, Co. Meath, told the Irish Voice during a phone interview from her home in the Bronx on Monday. “I have got all the bandages off my face.
“Every single day I am happy to wake up and not have severe pain.”

Jordan was the target of a random attack as she and a friend made the short walk home along Katonah Avenue in Woodlawn in the early hours of Saturday, July 14.

“I was so close to being home,” Jordan recalls. “I had walked home plenty of times before this. Needles to say I have not since.”

Walking along Katonah Avenue, the two women noticed a man talking to himself outside Country Bank.

“I just thought he was another weirdo on drugs or whatever,” said Jordan, who works as a bartender in White Plains.

But moments later, with Jordan’s friend a few steps ahead of her, the man attacked the young woman with a concrete slab.

“It was just one blow,” she recalled. “He came from my right side swinging the brick around and hit me in the face.”

Alerted by the Jordan’s screams, her friend, who wishes to remain anonymous, immediately sprang into action. Charging at the attacker, she pulled the t-shirt from his back before he fled the scene. On July 24 the NYPD arrested Jordan's assailant and charged him with felony assault.

The young Irish immigrant was confused when she woke up in hospital surrounded by her friends.
“I was in severe pain once I woke up.  I didn’t know what was going on, but waking up and seeing my friends was such a relief.”

With a single blow, Jordan’s attacker had broken her nose, skull, teeth and cheekbone. As well as the 15 stitches between her eyes, doctors informed her she would need extensive plastic surgery.

“It only hit me then what had happened.” Jordan recalls.

A close family friend made the phone call to Jordan’s home in Ireland with the bad news.

“They reacted very well considering they were 3,000 miles away,” Jordan said.

In the days following her attack, friends rallied around to help make arrangements for her mother and sister to come to New York. Despite having full knowledge of the extent of her injuries, Jordan’s mother was taken aback when she saw her daughter.

“Straight away she put her hand over her mouth, ‘My God what have they done?’ she asked.”

Now six weeks after the attack, Jordan is in recovering after recently undergoing a grueling seven hour surgery.

“The plastic surgeon said it went really well,” said an upbeat Jordan, who is in her third week of recovery after the operation.

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