The mom of five who was mercilessly pummeled by a homeless maniac at a Queens subway station revealed her gruesome injuries Tuesday — while issuing a desperate plea to Mayor Eric Adams.
“Our city needs major help,’’ said Elizabeth Gomes after removing her sunglasses to show her injuries from the horrific caught-on-camera attack, which included her eyes being swollen shut and a nasty gash over her right one.
“We’re going through a lot here,’’ the 33-year-old woman told The Post.
“I remember hearing that they would have cops posted on platforms, riding the trains, cops down in a subway. Mayor Adams said especially in the subway,’’ she said.
“The mayor said we would have much more cops in the subway and the cops specifically would be patrolling the subways because that’s where the worst of the crimes we are having. Especially at places like Howard Beach station.
“There was no one. Why no protection there?” she said, referring to her early-morning assault Sept. 20 at the Howard Beach subway station.
“Obviously, the government or nobody is doing anything for us,’’ the married mom said in a separate interview with her husband minutes earlier outside their home.
“When we’re out there, we’re by ourselves, we’re fighting these battles by ourselves, and what they do, they go try to help other countries that have nothing to do with what we’re going through in our own place.”
Gomes, asked later by The Post who she was referring to by “they,’’ replied, “The mayor, the governor.
“Like Eric Adams, our mayor, going to Puerto Rico,’’ she said, referring to Hizzoner’s weekend trip to what he called the city’s “sixth borough’’ to see what it needed after a ravaging hurricane.
That’s when she added that the Big Apple needs “major help’’ because of all it’s “going through.’’
Adams declined to comment to The Post, with his office referring questions to the NYPD.
In April, he vowed to double the number of NYPD officers on the subways after the horrific Brooklyn station shooting that injured 28 people.
Two months later, he said the NYPD would begin solo patrols of the subways so that more ground could be covered by cops. The move ended a safety policy of partnered patrols that had been instituted after the double street assassination of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos nearly 10 years earlier.
Gomes, a JFK Airport security guard, was on her way to work when she was randomly attacked by a ranting vagrant, identified by cops as an ex-con granny killer, Waheed Foster, who was still on parole for a 2010 assault.
She and her husband said she wandered around the station for 20 minutes looking for help after she was attacked. They said the MTA worker who was supposed in the subway booth at the time was on a bathroom break.
An MTA official told The Post that both the MTA and Port Authority man the booth.
“The booth agent on the New York City Transit half of the booth at Howard Beach was on what we call a ‘comfort break’ from 5:10 a.m. to 5:19 a.m.,” the official said.
The PA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“I was very surprised,” Gomes said of the lack of security, including cops. “They’re normally there. There’s always some sort of protection at Howard Beach station.
“I’m used to seeing Port Authority people there. I’m used to seeing, yes, [Port Authority cops] is there.
Her husband, Clement Tucker, added, “There was no security in the booth.
“There was no cops. The person who should have been in the booth was in the bathroom. They came out 20 minutes after she was attacked.
“She was walking around, and there was no one there to help her,” he said.
“Look at my wife’s eyes?” Tucker said. “She can’t see nothing out of her eyes.”
He said his wife could lose sight in her right eye and faces more surgery on it.
Gomes said through tears, “I’m scared to even leave my house.
“I don’t even want to take the train. You know, I love my job so much, and part of me, like, doesn’t want to go back because I’m scared.
“My life has changed. Everything changed,” said the mom, whose kids are ages 13, 12, 9, 8 and 3.
Gomes said she had been working at the Queens airport for about 10 years when she was attacked around 5:15 a.m., with her attacker ranting about Satan.
Police said Foster’s prior crimes include beating his grandmother to death when he was 14.
“What this lunatic did in brutalizing a transit rider is beyond outrageous, and we will work with Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz to make sure he is not free to terrorize more New Yorkers,” MTA New York City Transit President Richard Davey told The Post.
— Additional reporting by David Meyer
