District police investigating random attacks similar to "knockout game" The Internet is giving attackers bragging rights far beyond their circle of friends or even their neighborhoods. One particularly brutal video from New Jersey showing a young man hitting a woman from behind, sending her face first to the pavement, has a half-million views on YouTube. In recent years, such attacks have turned deadly in St. Louis and Upstate New York. "Regardless if you call it the knockout game or not, it's a senseless act," said Phoebe Connelly, 32, who was attacked Saturday night as she rode her bike on 11th Street NW. The Vermont resident visits the District often for her job, which involves running youth leadership programs. "I'm less concerned with what you call it as long as it stops and it doesn't happen to someone else," she said. Another woman said she was walking south on 14th Street last Thursday night when she heard a group of youths coming behind her on bikes, laughing and joking. One struck her on the back of her head as they rode past. "I don't know if it's part of a pattern or isolated," said the 27-year-old woman, who did not want to be named because she is a crime victim. They may not be connected, but it's certainly happening. There is no doubt in my mind that it was intentional. This was a fist put squarely to the back of my head. Youngsters interviewed in Columbia Heights said they knew about the knockout game from the simulation video game "Grand Theft Auto," in which players build a criminal empire and assume roles of thugs who can carjack drivers, shoot people, pick up prostitutes and randomly knock people to the ground. One 10-year-old boy said he recently punched someone on a $20 dare but failed to knock the victim to the ground. "Me and my friends were hanging out and they asked me if I had done one," the boy said. And I said I don't know how to play, so [they] explained it to me. A 15-year-old charter school student said that in "Grand Theft Auto," "you can just run up to people, and you can just like hit them and they'll just like fall. It looks kind of funny in the game. She said she wouldn't do it in real life. Fernanda Leiba, 21, a senior at Bell Multicultural High School, said she just heard of the knockout game in classes this week. "I think it's not funny because people are getting hurt," she said. What if someone does it to me? D.C. police declined to be interviewed on the topic. But in a statement, the department's chief spokeswoman, Gwendolyn Crump, made reference to the two Columbia Heights assaults when asked about recent attacks that appear to fit the pattern of the knockout game.