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Straphanger blinded by vagrant in random attack says she is grateful to be alive as brute learns his fate
The Queens mom brutally stomped by a deranged vagrant at a city subway station remains so traumatized that she couldn’t even face the brute in court Monday – as he was hit with a 22-year prison term in the vicious assault.
Elizabeth Gomes, who was left blinded by the unprovoked 2022 transit attack, told The Post it shattered her life.
“I really didn’t want to see this guy again because last time I saw him was the day that he changed m whole life in a bad way,” Gomes said in an interview following the court proceedings.
“I really didn’t want to see the guy who hurt me because, honestly, 22 years for this guy is not going to mean anything to him because he still gets to live rent-free,” she said. “I still have to deal with people looking at me and wondering what happened to me.”
Foster, who still faces a murder charge in the Bronx for allegedly strangling his girlfriend to death, cut a plea deal in the attempted murder case stemming from the violent caught-on-video attack at the Howard Beach-JFK Airport station on Sept. 20, 2022.
In a statement read in court by prosecutors in her absence, Gomes wrote that she can’t forget the nightmare “because every time I look in the mirror I always remember.
“Being in court today would have brought back so much pain, tears and bad memories, the kind of pain and memories I’m trying to forget.
“I’m very thankful that I’m still alive and truly thankful that Mr. Foster will be locked away for some time, even though it wouldn’t make me get my eyesight back,” the statement said.
Foster has an extensive mental health history and has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
“In this case the defendant has been in and out of hospitals time after time after time,” Judge Ira Margulis said during the proceedings in Queens Supreme Court.
“He should not have been out on the streets,” the judge said. “He should have been in a mental hospital, a state hospital being treated there. Because he showed time after time when he was released and taken off his meds, he continued to commit crimes.”
Gomes, who works in security at Kennedy International Airport, was on her way to work when she was attacked.
Foster already had a long rap sheet of violent crimes, including for beating his 82-year-old grandmother in a dispute over money when he was just 14 years old, law enforcement sources said.
In 2010 he stabbed a woman in the face at a mental institution, and in April of last year he was charged with strangling his former girlfriend to death on Aug. 6, 2022 in the Bronx.
The victim, 40-year-old Jessica Miller, was found unconscious in an apartment about a block from her home in Morris Park, with Foster later indicted on murder and manslaughter charges.
He remains at Rikers Island without bail on that case and is due back in court on July 24.
“There is no doubt in the city that we need services for mental health,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said after Monday’s sentencing. “We need to make sure that people don’t end up in our system to begin with.
“Having said that, when somebody is attacked as brutally as Ms. Gomes and the continuation of that attack after a good Samaritan tried to intervene, that person needs to be held accountable as well.”
Gomes, meanwhile, said she has to carry the scars of that attack for the rest of her life.
“I have people ask me what’s wrong with my eyes,” she wrote in her statement. “Sometimes little children think I’m scary. I try to overcome all negative comments and try to be strong, especially for me and my children and other women out there.”
In her interview with The Post on Monday, Gomes bemoaned the continuing violence that has plagued the five boroughs and the city subways in recent years.
“One person going away is not going to stop all the attacks because since he’s been gone a lot of people have still been getting hurt,” she said. “A guy got stabbed up the other day. He’s dead now.
“A lot needs to get done because people are scared to take the train,” she added. “One or two times I still have to take the train if no one picks me up because it’s a lot to take Uber every day to go home.
“I still feel afraid when I get on the train sometimes.”
