In the latest installment of a harrowing Tales From TikTok, the woman attacked with acid at the Winthrop Street subway station in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 2022 is using her social media platforms to share her story and journey to recovery after undergoing facial reconstruction.
In a Feb. 12 video on TikTok, Juanita Jimenez recalled the incident, attesting to it being an unprovoked attack.
“Dec. 2, 2022, [I was] on my way to work, but this is the first day that I had moved to my apartment officially, and so I didn’t know the commute,” Juanita stated as she removed her braids from her hair. “It just so happened that I was literally on the whole opposite side of the platform. When I got off the train, [the perpetrator] got off the train, too. As I’m walking down the platform or whatever, she’s walking with me and stuff.”
While the two women walked towards the subway exit, Juanita secretly took a video of the woman pretending she was on the phone. In other videos of Juanita explaining the incident, she affirms she doesn’t know what provoked her to start filming the woman since there wasn’t a heated moment between them that led to the attack, but the woman got into an argument with a man before the train stopped.
“She waited until we was all the way at the train steps to literally just throw acid on me. Like, she just threw acid on my face,” Juanita, who’s also a nurse, said.
The medical student felt the burning sensation and said it felt like her face was falling apart. She took herself to the hospital where she worked, two blocks from the station, and checked herself in. No one helped her.
“Before I even looked in the mirror, I thought [there were] holes in my face,” she said.
Juanita, along with the nurses, were shocked to find holes in the nursing student’s clothes from the acid.
While recovering, Juanita struggled to speak and eat foods like tacos.
One video posted on Feb. 3, 2023, gave a more visual explanation of what occurred, which included a video of the attacker causing problems with random people on the subway before the acid attack and her speaking with her co-workers about getting checked in immediately after.
While in the hospital, Juanita encountered celebrity plastic surgeon Dr. Carl Truesdale on social media. He operated on her pro bono after she contacted him and shared her story.
It wasn’t until a couple of weeks after the incident that Juanita felt the courage to document her recovery. She also documented her recovery following Dr. Truesdale’s reconstruction surgery.
The attacker was later identified as Rodlin Gravesande, who escaped to Atlanta before police caught up with her at a house in southwest Atlanta, according to the New York Post. They arrested and charged her with assault.
