A pair of 13-year-old girls ran an adolescent crew that’s been terrorizing upper Manhattan since April, cops said Monday.
The ringleaders were arrested Saturday night after police caught them beating a 40-year-old woman with a wooden stick on Amsterdam Avenue near West 135th Street, officials said.
“She hit me in my head,” Reina Zuniga told The Post during a tear-filled phone call Monday. “I’m crying because I was scared.”
Zuniga incurred the girls’ ire after telling them not to run around inside the medical clinic where she works, which prompted one of the teenage terrors to call her a “f–king bitch” before walloping her with a stick, she said.
One of the girls — whose names are being withheld due to their age — was charged with assault, according to authorities.
The pint-sized perps also are being eyed in a number of assaults and robberies in Morningside Heights and Hamilton Heights, the NYPD said.
Police said they have already linked the gang, which includes about a dozen girls and boys, to at least three other violent muggings near Morningside Park.
The first came on April 11, when a young girl among a larger group jumped a 31-year-old woman and grabbed her iPhone as the victim walked into her building in the vicinity of Amsterdam Avenue and La Salle Street, authorities said.
Three days later, two girls demanded a 22-year-old woman’s cellphone near West 123rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue, slugging her in the face when she refused, cops said.
They fled empty-handed when a few onlookers stepped in.
On April 23, two girls surrounded a 17-year-old on West 133rd Street near Broadway, punching her before running off with her purse, officials said.
One of the 13-year-olds was busted for that mugging on May 9, processed through the juvenile system and released in time to be arrested on her 13th birthday Saturday, police said. The second girl was busted and charged Saturday with the April 23 mugging.
“These kids are out of control,” said Lisa K., 43, a neighbor of one of the girls. “These girls are so young, oh my goodness.”
Cops also are probing whether the crew is responsible for several other unsolved attacks in the area — including the violent beating of Bob Lederer, an LGBT and AIDS activist, on April 17. The attack left Lederer hospitalized for eight days with a traumatic brain injury.
A man named Ishmael, who identified himself as the brother of one of the girls arrested, claimed Monday she is innocent, saying: “She’s able to sleep at night.”
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