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Jogger training for Army PFT mugged in NYC

NEW YORK — Knife-wielding muggers attacked a jogger running in Central Park to prepare for an Army physical fitness test, police and his family said.

“I’m in a lot of pain,” Johnny Reberon, 23, who works as a receptionist at a veterinary hospital but recently decided to join the Army. He returned from a hospital to his Manhattan home on Friday.

He was slashed in the arm and leg by two men who accosted him around 8:45 p.m. Thursday near 102nd Street and Central Park West, police said.

His mugging was near the park road where a 28-year-old investment banker was found after being attacked while jogging on April 19, 1989. She became known worldwide as “the Central Park jogger.”

Reberon’s attackers took his wallet and iPod, police said. They were searching for suspects early Saturday.

“When he saw all the blood coming out, he thought he was going to bleed to death,” said his mother, Carmen Zega of Lawrence, Mass. “I cried for hours.”

She said her son called 911 on a cell phone he’d tucked in one of his socks, but he was in too much agony to talk to the operator. Two bicyclists stopped and helped him, Zega said.