A TikTok influencer allegedly sucker-punched by a crazed nut in Chelsea nearly two years ago testified Tuesday that she can still feel where the blow landed on her head.
Halley McGookin, whose @halleykate account has 1.6 million followers, said at the Manhattan trial of accused slugger Skiboky Stora that she was on her way to record a podcast March 25, 2024, when she was suddenly punched by a stranger — and was so rattled, she apologized to the goon.
McGookin told her attacker she was sorry “because he was screaming at me, using a lot of profanity, saying it was my fault,” she said.
The victim said the attack left a lasting mark on her — both physically and emotionally.
“I couldn’t really touch anywhere near that spot,” McGookin testified in Manhattan Supreme Court of her lingering recovery. “I couldn’t really brush my head because it was so painful, tender.
“I can still feel in my hairline where I was hit,” she said.
Stora, 42, also is charged with harassment, assault and assault as a hate crime for several alleged random attacks, including on a Jewish couple when he yelled, “Die, Jews! Die!”
McGookin, who did not directly identify Stora as her assailant Tuesday, posted about the attack after it happened, with the online missive going viral and prompting a slew of other TikTokers to claim they were also victims of similar random attacks.
“You guys, I was literally just walking, and a man came up and punched me in the face,” McGookin told her followers after the violent encounter. “Oh my God, it was so bad. I can’t even talk.”
Stora, a self-proclaimed rapper who has run several mock election campaigns for mayor and city council, is representing himself in court — and ignoring the advice of a legal adviser.
In court, he wore a white tie with his first name scrawled on it.
He tried to grill McGookin with bizarre questions about allegedly being the target of a federal probe and a “TikTok trend going around that people were saying they were punched, sucker-punched too.”
Both questions were quickly shot down by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Josh Hanshaft.
McGookin was strolling near West 17th Street near Seventh Avenue around 10:20 a.m. on the day of the attack when she walked past Stora and says she was assaulted.
In addition to the attack on McGookin, Stora is charged with elbowing a 37-year-old woman near West 17th Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan on Oct. 26, 2023, and harassing the Jewish couple in Union Square, also in the borough, on Nov. 18, 2023, according to prosecutors.
He was arrested two days after the attack on McGookin based on an investigation by the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force and the Manhattan DA’s office.
His trial is scheduled to resume Wednesday.
