PBS reporter Jane Ferguson punched in face by stranger on NYC subway

A PBS News reporter said she was punched in the face by a stranger on a packed subway car during the evening rush hour in Manhattan Monday.

Jane Ferguson tweeted that she was riding a 4-train when a man randomly slugged the side of her face at around 6:30 p.m.

“A man walked up to me in a busy rush-hour car and punched me, hard, on the side of the face,” she wrote on Twitter. “I kneeled down on the floor in shock, and steadied myself, unsure what had just happened, my ear ringing and face on fire.”

The award-winning journalist said she decided to tweet about the violent assault in order to thank a fellow straphanger for helping her.

“The reason I’m tweeting this is, as I knelt on the floor, I felt an arm around my shoulder and a woman pulled me away,” Ferguson said. “The young woman took me off the car at the next stop and to the police there at grand central station before giving me a hug and making sure I got home ok.”

She only got the woman’s first name, Samantha, as she was still in a state of shock, she said.

“So Samantha who was on the number 4 express train between 59th st and grand central today at rush hour – thank you,” Ferguson tweeted. “New Yorkers are pretty great.”

Despite the violent assault, crime within the city’s subways has dramatically dropped this year after Mayor Eric Adams flooded the system with cops.

Major crime on the trains was down 21.5% year to date compared to the same period in 2022, The Post reported earlier this month. All serious felonies — other than burglary — decreased.