"I keep running through, 'I should have done this, I should have done this,'" victim Sue Young said. "It happened so fast."
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Battered and bruised from her New York subway encounter, Sue Young and her husband say they are still shocked by how quickly taunts on the F train spun wildly out of control.
"You just go into survival mode, and you just want to protect yourself," Young said.
Young's husband said they did not attack their antagonists, but instead defended themselves.
"I could have gotten up and attacked them, I didn't," Sue Young said.
The disturbing scene caught on video shows three girls screaming and cursing at Young, her husband and their 11-year-old twin girls on an F train in Greenwich Village on Thursday.
They say the three teens sitting across from them started laughing and pointing, and when they didn't back down, quickly became more aggressive and then violent.
"It escalated very quickly," Young said.
The woman who filmed the confrontation says one of the girls also assaulted her three times.
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"She darted over, took me by the hair, threw me on the ground and started punching me," alleged assault victim Joanna Lin said.
The teens, on video, told the family to go back to where they came from.
Top officials at the MTA and the state weighed in on Monday.
"I haven't seen the video, but I'll tell you this, there's no place for hate on our system," MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber said. "It's being investigated."
"This woman had no reason to be attacked, whatsoever," Governor Kathy Hochul said. "There's no tolerance for this in the state of New York."
But from the victims themselves, who have been talking to investigators, there's compassion.
"We don't know what battles other people have in their lives, but I can imagine they're probably not as privileged," Sue Young's husband said. "That probably has a lot to do with their outlook on the world and the anger they may have."
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The question is: was this particular attack a hate crime?
The victims told Eyewitness News, "absolutely not." They don't believe this meets that high standard, but they say it was certainly a crime.
Police are looking for the public's in help tracking down one of those three girls.
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