EAST NEW YORK — A home health aide who was viciously beaten and robbed of his iPhone 7 while walking from the subway to his Barbey Street home died of his injuries more than a month after the attack, police said Tuesday.
Huiping Wu, 50, was less than a block from his house on Barbey Street near Glenmore Avenue when a mugger snuck up on him June 24 around 7 p.m., the NYPD said.
“My dad looked at his phone to check the time,” Lili Wu, 18, told DNAinfo through tears. “When he looked up, he got punched.”
“The guy held him down and said, ‘Give me something!’ My dad had his iPhone in his hands and the guy took it.”
Wu, bloodied and battered, knocked on a neighbor’s door for help, but there was no answer. He ultimately staggered back down the block to his house, his daughter said.
“He rang the bell. My brother was the only one home,” she said. “One side of his face was swollen and he was bleeding.”
They raced to Brookdale Hospital, where doctors told Wu he had two broken bones in his neck, Lili Wu said.
He returned home a couple of days later, but when he went in for further evaluation in July, doctors told Wu he wasn’t healing properly, his daughter said.
They operated on him July 28, but he died of his injuries the following day, she said.
NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said Tuesday that Wu died from “complications following cervical spine fixation,” citing a report from the Medical Examiner.
Relatives said Wu emigrated from Guandong, China, four years ago and traveled every day by subway to a residence in Elmhurst, Queens, where he worked as a home health aide for an elderly man.
“He was hard working and family oriented,” Lili Wu said through sobs. “He came here in 2013 for better opportunities. He always took care of me and made sure we’d have food to eat and everything.”
Boyce said investigators have their work cut out for them.
“We looked in the area to see if we could find any other issues that were going on there. We did not. No patterns, nothing like that,” he said.
“Video doesn’t seem to be available in the area either. We have a long way to go.”
