BANGOR, Maine — The woman who was blinded in a brutal 2014 attack while pregnant and living at an Essex Street apartment with the man currently on trial for assaulting her has moved on with her life, her son said Wednesday by phone from Florida.
“She’s doing well,” Donny Smith said of his 43-year-old mother, who gave birth to a beautiful girl a year ago. “She has a permanent place to stay, a real stable place to stay.”
The Bangor Daily News is not naming her because she is the victim of domestic violence. Smith said she didn’t want to be interviewed.
Joshua Cole, 35, is charged with elevated aggravated assault on a pregnant person, a Class A crime, and aggravated assault, a Class B crime. He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and is before a judge in a jury-waived trial that began Wednesday and will determine if he was sane or not when the assault happened. He has not denied hurting her.
She was attacked on Aug. 18, 2014. Police were called at about 2:15 a.m. by a neighbor who said Cole was strangling the woman.
The neighbor and her boyfriend tried to intervene, but were injured in the process and had to retreat inside their apartment, which is across the hall from Cole’s.
“She don’t like to talk about any of that,” Smith said of the attack on his mother. “Jesus was needed.”
She was homeless before meeting Cole, who became her boyfriend but is not the father of her unborn child, she said in an interview shortly after she was injured. She moved in with him about a month before she was attacked and said she learned he had mental health problems when she found prescription pill bottles while cleaning the apartment.
During an interview at Eastern Maine Medical Center, she said she was heartbroken that she would never get to see the face of her unborn daughter.
Both Smith and his mother are from Florida and moved to Maine about five months before she was attacked. Smith’s mother and sister now live with her mother in Jacksonville, placing three generations under one roof.
“She’s just been raising the baby. She’s been growing up quick,” Smith said of his mother and baby sister. “My mom, she changes her, she gives her baths and she gets her up and puts her to bed. Her mom helps with the food.”
Smith has been helping out as well but is returning to Maine next week to continue his work to become a minister at City Reach Church on Forest Avenue.
“I just care about his soul,” Smith said, referring to Cole. “That’s my only concern.”
While his mother doesn’t usually talk about what happened, she did recently ask about how long Cole will be locked up.
“She wondered about that,” Smith said, adding she was concerned he would get out and hurt someone else.
Cole would be confined to Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta until it is determined he no longer is a danger to others if he is found not criminally responsible for the attack by reason of insanity.
If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000 on the charge stemming from the assault on the pregnant woman and up to 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine on the charge connected to the assault on the neighbor.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence and would like to talk with an advocate, call 866-834-4357, TRS 800-787-3224. This free, confidential service is available 24/7 and is accessible from anywhere in Maine.