Nurse who beat coronavirus is attacked and robbed on her way to work by a group of 15 thugs in New York City

A nurse who beat coronavirus has been attacked and robbed on her way to work by a group of thugs who threw her to the ground and fled with her purse.  

Martha Toscano, 60, had just got out of the 6 train station and was making her way to Bellevue Hospital on Wednesday evening at 10.30pm.

She was approached by around 15 thugs who ran her down and pummeled her to the floor, she told The New York Post.

Toscano said: 'I thought they were going to kill me. 

'They hit me on the head, on the face, I ran and fell on the floor and they keep hitting me.'

Martha Toscano, pictured, had only been back at work for three days after beating coronavirus when the assault took place

She wept as she told the Post how the attack happened just three days after she returned to work from beating Covid-19. She had been off for two weeks while she recovered from the virus. 

The vicious assault was interrupted only when three men driving down the street came to her rescue and screamed at the thugs to stop.

She said: 'Thank God these angels came, because nobody was in the street, nobody.'

The men helped the woman up and chased the muggers to retrieve her purse, to no avail.

Toscano said she has been left with 'pain in all my body', including 'my back, my neck, bumps on my head, even on my elbows' and was taken to hospital for her injuries.  

She returned home at around 4am and was forced to call her landlord to get into her apartment because her keys, ID and credit cards were all in the purse swiped by her attackers.  

On Thursday police arrested three of the alleged assailants. 

They include two teenage girls aged 14 and 15 and a 19-year-old man named Deshaun Harrison, the Post reported. 

All three suspects are allegedly residents of a nearby group home run by the city's Administration for Children's Services (ACS), sources told the Post.

Harrison was charged with robbery in the second degree, the sources said. 

An ACS spokeswoman told the Post the agency couldn't legally comment.   

Toscano is now recovering at home with her fiancé in Queens and said she didn't know when she would return to work because of how terrified she was. 

The Bellevue Hospital is the oldest public hospital in the US and dealing with an unprecedented number of Covid-19 cases.

It has installed temporary refrigerators outside to act as makeshift morgues while it deals with rising death tolls. 

New York city - the epicentre of the country's coronavirus pandemic - has so far seen more than 123,000 diagnoses and more than 11,000 deaths.