A veteran FDNY paramedic recounted the moment when she went suddenly from rescuer to victim after a drug-addled teen chewed through her left cheek in a disfiguring attack.
FDNY EMS Jenna Piscitello was helping the teen onto a stretcher when the teen suddenly bit her face and ripped a chuck of her left cheek, leaving her “deformed”.
“I could feel her teeth digging into my flesh,” the 28-year-old health worker recounted.
“It was almost a stunned feeling … I looked and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, she took a chunk of my face off.’”
Piscitello, who was recovering in her Staten Island home on Saturday, recalled seeing blood when her facemask fell off during the assault.
“I’m holding up as best I can,” she said.
“It was a very traumatic experience. Physically, my face is deformed. I’m not pleasant to look at. Emotionally, I’m very drained. But I have the support of my family, friends and co-workers.”
Piscitello was responding to a call in Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn around 2 am on Friday when the attack happened.
She continued to work on her attacker until they were both treated in NYU-Langone Brooklyn hospital.
“As I picked her up, she just wrapped her legs around me and her arms around my neck and then just bit into me,” Piscitello shared.
“At first, I didn’t really realize what she was doing. Then there was just immense amounts of pain.”
“There’s always a danger, but it just, I just, we need better protection in some way, shape or form,” she added.
The teen, who remained unidentified due to her age, will be facing a felony charge for assault.
The daughter of Italian immigrants had received four stitches and had scheduled an appointment with a plastic surgeon, while a GoFundMe page had been set up to help her with recovery.