Woman Fears She’ll Lose Her Eye After Being Thrown Across JFK Airport Subway Station
Harriet Alexander, Daily Mail, September 26, 2022
A woman arriving at JFK airport for her job as a security guard fears she’ll lose her sight in one eye after she was savagely beaten by a homeless career criminal at the airport subway station.
Elizabeth Gomes, 33, arrived at the Howard Beach station in Queens, New York City, at around 5:15am on September 20.
Waheed Foster, 41, tried to start a conversation, but when she ignored him he flung himself at her – dragging her to the ground then kicking and punching her.
Foster, who was arrested for murdering his 82-year-old foster grandmother in a brutal beating at the age of 14, rained blows down Gomes as she cowered on the floor.
One man tried to come to Gomes’s aid, but Foster chased him away and then resumed attacking her.
He then walked away, leaving Gomes on the floor. The vagrant was arrested shortly after.
Elizabeth Gomes was on her way to work at JFK airport at 5:15 am, when she was attacked at the airport station. #newyork #us #attack #queens #anews pic.twitter.com/EOHkozvwDq
— ANews (@anews) September 27, 2022
It later emerged he was arrested six years after the murder for stabbing his 21-year-old sister with a screwdriver.
In 2010, he was arrested for attacking three workers at the Creedmore Psychiatric Center, where he was an inpatient.
He was on parole until November 2024 at the time of last week’s attack, ABC News reported.
‘Do you know how scared I am now? I was never a person to be scared,’ Gomes told the network.
‘I can’t see anything on my right side, honestly. And it just hurts.’
She said doctors told her she may lose her sight in her right eye, and she said she has been unable to sleep, left with a throbbing head.
‘Every day is an incident in the subway,’ she said. ‘What happened to all these police officer they said they will have there to protect us? There’s like nobody to be found. I don’t understand.’
She said Foster was muttering about Satan when he attacked her.
‘He’s talking about the devil. He’s talking about a whole bunch of nonsense,’ Gomes said.
Foster has been charged with felony assault.
He has two other pending criminal cases against him, on charges of criminal mischief and minor theft.
Transit crime has soared more than 43 percent so far this year compared to the same period in 2021, according to the latest NYPD statistics.
There were 1,165 crimes reported in the city transit system for the period last year compared to 1,670 this year, the figures show.
