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Woman Bitten at Peter Luger Was Dining With Venezuelan U.N. Rep: Report

By Gwynne Hogan | July 11, 2017 10:20am
 Peter Luger Steak House at 178 Broadway.
Peter Luger Steak House at 178 Broadway.
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DNAinfo/Gwynne Hogan

WILLIAMSBURG — The sauce thickens. 

The woman who was bitten at Peter Luger Steak House on Sunday afternoon was dining with the Venezuelan representative to the United Nations, Rafael Ramirez, when his group was confronted by anti-government activists, according to the Nuevo Herald.

Ramirez, former head of the state-owned petroleum company, was dining at the renowned steakhouse with his family when two activists confronted him over the country's climbing death toll as part of violent clashes between police and protesters, according to the Miami-based, Spanish-language publication.

Several videos of the confrontation posted online show the protesters calling Ramirez an "assassin," with one woman saying, "You're going to bite me" in Spanish.

"The 90 people they've have killed in Venezuela, [it's] people like you," one protester says, waving his finger at Ramirez, according to the video. "Assassin!"

"They're going to put you in jail," one woman cries. 

Police were called to the steakhouse at 178 Broadway at 4 p.m. Sunday, with a 50-year-old woman reporting being randomly bitten by someone she didn't know, DNAinfo earlier reported. Several cell phone videos of the altercation didn't capture the actual chomping.

Hours after the attack Ramirez took to Twitter to decry what had happened to him, writing in Spanish that, "Two [people] attacked me and my family: Gabriel Manzano and Tatiana Low. We put them in their place. They hid behind a child. Justice will be served."

Ramirez' office later put out a press release identifying Manzano, of Venezuelan nationality and Low, as high powered executives at CitiBank.

The NYPD said that Low was a suspect in the biting, but she and Manzano could not be reached for comment.

Food shortages and scarcity of basic household goods in Venezuela under President Nicholas Maduro's rule has triggered months of violent protests there.