Teens attack French tourist strolling with his family in Midtown; ‘In Paris, I would have taken them,’ victim’s son-in-law says

The 71-year-old patriarch of a family of French tourists was attacked Saturday in Midtown by a group of teens over the weekend who punched the elderly man, knocking him to the ground, police said.

Giles Viguier, a retired lawyer from Paris, suffered a bruised face and a shock to his system when he and his family faced down a group of five teens on W. 55th St. near Broadway just after 9 p.m. as they were coming back from dinner during a weeklong vacation in New York City.

“They probably heard us speaking French and thought we were tourists,” he said Tuesday at his hotel.

Viguier and his family had just finished dinner at a Japanese restaurant and was strolling back to the Moderne hotel when he was pushed from behind.

“We were walking back from the restaurant when a bunch of teenagers came from behind,” he said in French, which his son-in-law Michael Poret, 29, translated into English. “One of the teens pushed me and I turned around to get him to stop and he punched me in the head and I went down.”

Poret said that there were five of them, but two were especially aggressive.

“I was by his side,” the son-in-law said. “They hit him in the head first.”

One of attackers, a woman who appeared to be in her early 20s, tried to ward off the Frenchmen as they attempted to defend themselves.

“Don’t touch my brother,” the sister called out, according to Poret.

As his wife stepped in to intervene in the attack, she got slugged.

“My wife tried to defend her father and she got punched,” he said. “She then pulled out her phone and started to record the group.

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“They wanted to keep hitting him until my wife started to film them,” added Poret, an IT engineer who also lives in Paris.

He said that he was too intimidated to act.

“I’ve seen the videos of what can happen in New York. In Paris, I would have taken them,” Poret said.

Instead, he “tried to de-escalate,” the son-in-law said.

When the attackers realized that they were being recorded, they fled eastbound on E. 55th St.

“I still love New York,” Viguier said. “It can happen anywhere. My wife, however — she doesn’t feel safe. It’s too bad because our vacation was so good until this happened.”

The family flies back to France on Wednesday.