A New York model says he was left with a broken jaw and missing teeth during a brutal robbery outside a swanky Manhattan lounge — and is now planning to sue the night spot, arguing its security did nothing to stop the attack, The Post has learned.
Adam Byrd, 33, had just left the East Village’s Little Sister Lounge with a pal on March 16 when a group of men punched, kicked and beat him with a belt before snatching a $35,000 necklace off his neck in a “targeted’ attack, he said.
But Byrd claims the bar’s bouncers refused to help despite being mere steps away during the beatdown.
“Security is three feet from this situation and watched this happen, with the belt and stomping to the face,” Byrd told The Post on Thursday.
The model and actor — who said he was still rattled a month after the attack — plans to sue the security staff and Tao Group Hospitality, which owns Little Sister Lounge, for negligence, his attorney, Anthony C. Sears, said.
Byrd said he was walking out of the lounge, located on East 11th Street, near Fourth Avenue, when the attackers came out of nowhere and jumped his pal.
“I see my friend literally within four seconds of walking out of the venue, he gets sucker punched by one guy and then sucker punched by another guy,” Byrd said in a phone interview.
One of the assailants allegedly yanked off his buddy’s Rolex, before turning to Byrd and pummeling him.
“My back is turned. I hear footsteps running up to me and the next thing I know I wake up to a stomp,” Byrd recalled, adding the brutes pinned him down and elbowed his body.
The attackers then pulled out a belt.
“They were beating me in the face with belts… they were beating me while I was unconscious for over a minute,” Byrd said.
“They were trying to rip the chain off my neck but it wouldn’t come off,” he said about his 22-inch Cuban white gold diamond encrusted necklace. “They were stomping my face down onto the pavement.”
He said he was pleading with the bouncers to do something.
“I’m literally begging for help,” he recalled. “I’m asking ‘please, can somebody call the cops?”
One of the bouncers came up to him and said “No, Byrdie,” he claimed, adding that he believes he was set up and that the security may have been part of the alleged plot.
Byrd said he eventually ran into the street, stopping a police officer after his attackers fled.
He was taken by EMS to Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital, police said.
Byrd spent several days in the hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery on the inside of his jaw and was left with wires in his mouth.
“I don’t have feeling on my jaw on the outside from my chin to the back side of the jaw… They had to mend one of my nerves,” he said, adding he needs six months or more of recovery.
Byrd said a detective told him he was targeted, and he’s been left feeling paranoid since.
“I never would have imagined that they would have seen me getting stomped in the face and not only not help but ensure I didn’t get any assistance,” he said of the security guards.
Sears, of personal injury firm Shulman & Hill, said it’s one of “the most heinous cases of negligent security” he’s ever seen.
“This case highlights a disturbing reality: the negligence of ‘security guards’ to take any measure, at all, to protect club patrons,” he said.
The Tao Group did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Police said the suspected assailants remain at large.
