NYC straphanger shot with gel pellets, robbed of glasses

A Queens straphanger was attacked by a menacing crew of creeps who fired gel pellets at him before making off with his prescription eyeglasses, authorities said Monday. 

The 34-year-old victim was riding a southbound No. 7 train at Main Street in Flushing around 4:30 p.m. Sunday when the male suspects approached him and “began to harass him,” cops said. 

Then they punched him and fired a “gel shot imitation pistol” toward him, police said. Such “guns” use water-absorbing polymer beads as “ammo.” 

The suspects tried to grab the victim’s gold chain but were unsuccessful, cops said. 

The victim was able to briefly get away from his attackers and move to another car toward the front of the train, police said. 

He got off the train at the Jackson Heights–Roosevelt Avenue/74th Street station, where the muggers approached him once again on the platform, cops said. 

There, they snatched his prescription eyeglasses off his face and smacked him, police said. 

The robbers fled with the victim’s glasses and were last seen hopping on an F train, cops said. 

Police released surveillance photos early Monday of the suspects, who are still on the lam and described as in their late teens or early 20s.

The victim is Asian, according to cops, but there was not immediately any evidence of a hate crime. 

He did not report any injuries and refused medical attention at the scene. 

Earlier in the year, a social-media trend saw teens using the same type of guns to shoot the circular gel beads at friends. 

In July, an NYPD traffic agent was writing a ticket in The Bronx when he was struck in the back with four Orbeez brand water gel pellets, police said.

That same month, city Correction officer Dion Middleton, 45, also was charged in the Bronx shooting death of 18-year-old Raymond Chaluisant, who may have been firing a water-pellet gun at him, cops said.

Middleton’s lawyer, Joey Jackson, has claimed that his client opened fire in self-defense.