Kin’s pain as Times Square vic dies
The New Jersey cancer nurse who was knocked down by a deranged homeless mugger in Times Square died Saturday evening after clinging to life for a day and a half.
“I watched them pull the plug,” Maria Ambrocio’s brother, Carlito Spa Ma, told The Post.” I was holding her hand to the very last pulse.”
“They knew it wasn’t looking good, so I said my goodbye to her last night a couple of times. I told her, ‘You will be with our mother and father.’ ”
Ambrocio, 58, of Bayonne, was walking through Times Square at around 1:30 p.m. Friday after accompanying a friend to the Philippine Consulate in Midtown and having lunch, her cousin told The Post.
It was then, cops say, that Jermaine Foster, 26, grabbed a cellphone out of the hands of a 29-yearold woman at West 41st Street and Broadway and slammed into Ambrocio as he fled.
Ambrocio’s friend and co-worker, Emilia Cruz, 70, was with her at the time.
“I heard a big thump like something hit the concrete and, you know, it was loud so I said ‘Wow, oh, my God! What’s that?’ and I looked down and I saw her blouse, I didn’t see the face, and I said, ‘Oh, my God, Ning!’ I call her Ning. I said ‘Ning, what happened? Wake up,’ and she was out.
“She was already unconscious. She is not answering me. I keep picking her up. She was frothing from her mouth. And I said, ‘Call 911.’
A native of the Philippines, Ambrocio was an oncology nurse at Bayonne Medical Center who previously worked at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan.
A photo on her Facebook page posted at the start of the pandemic shows her in full protective gear with a caption: “I Cannot Stay at Home, I’m a Nurse.”
Foster (inset) was charged Saturday morning with robbery and assault in the incidents, police said, and charges may be upgraded.
His alleged crime spree actually began 90 minutes earlier, when he barged into a woman’s apartment at Sixth Avenue and West 38th Street, police said.
The woman, who did not want to be identified, told The Post she heard someone ringing the buzzers to get into the building.
Thinking it was a food delivery, she let the man in and opened her studio-apartment door a crack to ask for whom he was looking.
“He busted my door open. He rushed into the apartment,” she said.
He demanded money and she started screaming to neighbors to call 911, which she also did. Foster broke things and then sat on her couch silently.
The woman said she grabbed his phone to hold as evidence, but that only riled him up.
“He started screaming, ‘I’m an African prince!’ ” she said.
The victim, in her 30s, said she tried to keep Foster on the scene until the cops arrived, but he ran off.
Foster has been charged with robbery and burglary over the break-in. He had yet to be arraigned as of Saturday evening.