Exclusive | New Yorker nearly killed in infamous shopping cart attack returns to city she loves

She beat a real-life horror story — so Halloween in Gotham doesn’t scare her one bit.

The Upper West Side philanthropist who famously survived being struck on the head by a shopping cart hurled by two young thugs from four stories high is returning home 15 years after the random attack shocked NYC.

Marion Hedges made a last-minute trip on Oct. 30, 2011, to an East Harlem mall to buy candy for the underprivileged kids invited to her annual Halloween block party. The candy run ended in a nightmare when a pair of heartless teens hurled a heavy Target shopping cart from a walkway 79 feet above. her.

The married mom of two suffered permanent brain damage, two broken ribs and a broken collarbone. Rescuers revived Hedges with CPR after she lost her pulse. She spent the next four days in a medically induced coma at Harlem Hospital — followed by three years of cognitive therapy.

Now, after bolting first to Connecticut and then the Hamptons, the 62-year-old is moving back to her old neighborhood. She plans to devote herself once again to improving the lives of at-risk youngsters like the ones who nearly took her life.

“I’m very aware of my limitations — but I don’t believe in the word ‘victim,'” Hedges, who has severe double vision, defiantly told The Post.

“I refuse to be afraid of home. I have a cane and believe me, I’m ready to use it if I have to.”

Hedges even plans to volunteer this Halloween — at a community center kids’ party in the South Bronx .

“Halloween is a fun time – it’s not a time to stay home and hide. I try not to look at it with sadness,” said the former real estate broker who can no longer drive, shed a tear or even read a book due to her compromised vision and attention span.

“I don’t think about what I don’t have – I try not to live a nightmare,” she said.

The two boys who hurled the cart – Raymond Hernandez, then 12, and Jeovanni Rosario, then 13 – pleaded guilty to assault and got slaps on the wrist.

Hernandez continued along a dark path, busted in 2015 in connection to a string of 14 burglaries.

In 2021, an uncle told The Post by phone that Rosario “was in a couple of programs after that,” but is now “working — he’s doing good,” stayed out of trouble, and “stayed clean after that.”

Hedges told The Post she’s never heard from them, but “hope[s] their future is not based on one horrible act.” 

“It was a bad day for all of us. It damaged their lives and my life forever,” she said.

Her message to them is to “move forward. I hope they become parents who will help their children make good decisions.”

Achilles Baskin, a third boy who tried to stop his pals from tossing the cart, eventually turned in his buddies.  

Baskin was hailed as a hero by then-Mayor Bloomberg and the Hedges family, but among his peers he was branded a snitch, according to Hedges. In 2023, Baskin was gunned down in suspected — and unrelated — drug violence.

Hedges serves on the board of Scan-Harbor, a nonprofit in the Bronx and East Harlem — the same neighborhoods her attackers came from — as her way of helping transform disadvantaged kids’ lives.

Her husband of 35 years, Michael, backs her forgiveness — though he “is afraid of something bad happening” back in NYC. Hedges shot back: “Nothing bad is going to happen to me — it’s already happened to me.

“I don’t want to be afraid of my own city – I don’t want to live in a bubble.”

Hedges also no longer wants to be known as “the shopping cart lady.” 

“I want to be known as ‘the shopping cart survivor – making a difference in New York,'” she said.