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Police Release Video Of Violent Robber Attacking Young Woman In Brooklyn

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Police are looking for a violent attacker who assaulted a woman as she walked from the subway.

It took just a few terrifying seconds.

A 6-foot mugger wearing a hood was caught on a surveillance camera, grabbing a much smaller, young woman in a headlock before taking her phone and her purse.

1010 WINS' John Montone reports

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The victim, 26-year-old Lily Cherazi, was visiting a friend in a Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment building. She was in town from Sonoma, Calif., where she lives, and was held up by a man she believed was armed.

"He put me in a headlock and slowly whispered in my ear so calmly 'This is a stick up,'" Cherazi told CBS 2's Derricke Dennis. "It felt like a gun underneath his jacket like kind of poking into my chest."

It happened at a gated entrance complete with a camera back on April 9, but the NYPD just released the horrifying video to generate leads on the attacker who still hasn't been apprehended.

"So the fact that she came back for a few short days and it happened right outside my building. Yeah she was terrified," said Hilary Schnitz, the victim's friend.

The victim believes she was followed for her iPhone from the Bedford-Nostrand Avenue Station on the G line, roughly a block and a half to her friend's apartment.

"I was yelling after him -- take everything, take the money, take my phone, just let me keep my ID. I'm flying out tomorrow," Cherazi said.

Cherazi had no such luck.

The suspect took it all, including cash, credit cards, and her ID, and took off down the street. Even though a month has passed since it happened, her friends are still haunted.

"I freaked out too, because I live here, so I freaked out too," Schnitz said.

The video is the only clue police have to find the aggressive mugger, before he attacks again.

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