The Queens mom savagely beaten by a ranting homeless man at a Howard Beach subway station confirmed for the first time that she will lose her eye because of the attack.
“I’m going to be blind in my right eye now,” said Elizabeth Gomes. “The nerve system is completely damaged and the eye is just deflating.”
Gomes, 33, said she is scheduled to meet with a specialist at New York Eye & Ear Infirmary on Feb. 13 to learn the next steps in getting a prosthetic eye.
“I mean honestly, I still wake up everyday and I still can’t believe it. I still think to myself ‘Wow I lost my vision at 33 years of age while I was just going to work. How can my life ever be the same,’ ” Gomes said.
Her life tragically changed shortly after 5 a.m. Sept. 20 as she got off the subway at the Howard Beach A train station on her way to her security guard job at Kennedy Airport.
A man who had been ranting about the devil hit her over the head with a bottle and then chased her before throwing her into the side of a token booth and then repeatedly pummeling and stomping on her.
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The stomach-churning assault, which was caught on video, shows a good Samaritan trying to help, but being chased away by the assailant as the attack continues.
Waheed Foster, 42, was indicted in September on attempted murder and assault charges.
Foster, who killed his own grandmother when he was 14, had been arrested weeks earlier for violating parole in another case, but was let go thanks to state reform laws.
Gomes has been unable to return to work and still fears being around groups of people. She lives with her mother and fiancee, Clement Tucker, and their 3-year-old son. She has two other children, ages 10 and 12, and Tucker has two.
“I can’t let them see that I made something like this just take control of my life and I can’t be the mother I know I can be to them,” she said.
She said she wants Foster put away for good, but he is currently in the custody of the state Office of Mental Health after being deemed unfit to stand trial, according to the Queens District Attorney’s office.
“I believe he should get a long sentence where he shouldn’t even come outside again,” Gomes said. “He should feel how we felt, like the pain and the suffering that we had to go through.”