A woman who was accused of defacing a “Black Lives Matter” street painting was in the car that plowed through a group of protesters in Times Square — and claimed Friday that the driver was merely trying to get her and others “to safety.”

Juliet Germanotta, 39, told the “Freedom News” website that she and several pals went to “counter-protest” at the Crossroads of the World on Thursday and were confronted by hundreds of demonstrators who “started verbally harassing and taunting us.”

Germanotta and her friends made their back way to one person’s car and got in, she said, but the protesters were “trying to open the car, hitting the car.”

“I heard something really heavy hit the car and that’s when we just went,” she told the site.