Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Chose to Fight That Day

Episode Date: April 6, 2024

Dorothy is leaving the grocery store with her daughters when they are attacked by a pair of young men who rape Dorothy and shoot her in the head. Jim is out picking blueberries alone and without his cellphone when he is bitten by a rattlesnake. Bud and Katrina are each enjoying a day on the Menominee river with their friends when a man in camouflage opens fire with a rifle. Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Prolon: Go to ProLonLife.com/Survived to get 10% off your 5-day nutrition program! Prose: Take your FREE in-depth hair consultation and get 50% off your first subscription order today PLUS 15% off and free shipping every subscription order after that! Go to Prose.com/survive 

This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. He raised his shirt and there was a gun. He said, get in the car and nobody will get hurt. I saw him come up to strike again. Two strikes would have definitely killed me. I was down there by myself, just terrified. Sitting there with a dying person in front of me. I was down there by myself just terrified sitting there with a dying person in front of me. The car was gone, my girls were gone. It was just

this dark dirt road. Real people who faced death and lived to tell how. This is I Survived. It's January 1993 in Eustis, Florida. I was a single mother. My husband had passed away. I'm raising two little girls, Jamila and Jasmine. Jamila was nine years old and Jasmine was three. They were just beautiful children, you know, the love of my life. We were always together. On Saturday night, Dorothy prepared for church the following morning. We have to bring covered dishes for church tomorrow, so I wanted to make this strawberry pretzel salad, and I didn't have all the ingredients for that. I don't usually go out at night,

but I thought, I really want to make this dish. So the girls and I got together, got them dressed, and we went on to the store. Dorothy parked outside the grocery store and got the girls out of the car. There were a couple of guys sitting on the bench outside, but I didn't dwell on that. I just went on in and picked up what we needed. When we went out, there wasn't anyone there.

The guys had left. After I put my girls in the car, locked them up in the front seat, I was headed to get in the car on the driver's side. I was approached by this young guy. As he got closer, he raised his shirt, and there was a gun. He said, get in the car, and nobody will get hurt. All I could really think about was getting to my babies. I thought, too, if I scream, just didn't know what would happen.

If I run back inside the store, then my babies are left in the car, the guy has a gun, what will he do? My thought is to be with my girls and try to protect them. There was another black guy on the sidewalk who appeared to be older than the guy that approached me. He came over, got the keys, and said for us to get in the car. He was like, just do what we tell you to do, and nobody's going to get hurt.

And I believed that. If I did everything they told me to do to not upset them in any way, that they would keep their word. I asked if I could get my babies out of the front seat so that they could be in the back with me. After being moved to the back seat, the children started to cry.

The younger guy was upset because there were a lot of crying, so he was, like, using bad words like, make them shut the F up. And I'm like, they're scared. What do you expect them to do? I pleaded with them. I said, just let us go. Take the car. You can have the car.

Just let us go. One of the guys said, no, I can't do that. I didn't know where we were going. So I was trying to look at street signs. So whenever we got to wherever they were taking us, I'm thinking, OK, I can remember how to get back out of here. I just began to call on Jesus. I'm going, Jesus, Jesus.

And the guy that was driving the car, he said, well, you can stop calling Jesus. This isn't Jesus. This is Satan. I'm sitting in the middle. Jasmine was on my right side. Jamelia was on my left. Jamelia was sitting close to the door.

So I'm thinking, you know, if this car slows down enough or even come to a stop sign, hopefully we can jump out. So I said to Jamelia, when I tell you to jump, you jump. When the car slowed down at an intersection, Dorothy grabbed the door handle. I raised the handle, My hand slipped off. The guy heard the noise. He says, get your hand off the door. Leave the door alone. He says, doing stuff like that is going to get you hurt.

After driving for 15 minutes, the men stopped the car on a deserted dirt road. Both guys got out of the car. The older guy, who actually was driving, he got out, opened the door, and pulled me out, and leaned me on the trunk of the car. I knew what was about to happen because my, he pulled off my undergarments. And that's when I was, please don't do this

in front of the girls. Please don't do this. Just take the car and go. He called me the B word, be, be quiet, you know, and act like you like this. While he's doing what he's doing, the younger guy was standing on the side telling the other guy to hurry up, hurry up, man.

My girls were still sitting in the back seat of the car. And in my mind, I'm like, I know they're watching. The younger man put the gun down on the trunk of the car. At the corner of my eye, I could see the gun. I reached for it quickly, and the younger guy grabbed it. You know, you're not going to get this gun, B. When the older guy finished doing what he was doing, the younger guy came and raped me as well. After the raping stopped, I was told to go sit on the ground. And I said, you told me, if I did what you told me to do,

that nobody would get hurt. Well, he didn't want to hear that. So I didn't willingly go sit on the ground. The older guy picks the gun up and shoots me in my leg. While I'm sitting there on the ground, I guess in shock or whatever, the older guy comes toward me with the gun. He points it directly in my face.

And then I began to fight like a wildcat. I tried everything I could do to get the gun away from him, and the lights went out. When I woke up, I realized that nobody was around. The car was gone. My girls were gone. It was just this dark, dark road. I began to walk down the road looking for help.

Whenever I would see car headlights, I would hide in the bushes, thinking that those guys might be coming back for me. When the lights disappeared, I would begin to walk and walk. It feels as though this is all a dream. It really doesn't feel real. I'm all alone. My girls aren't with me. I don't know where they are.

I just want to find them. Desperate for help, Dorothy eventually saw a house with a porch light on. I knocked on the door. I told the man who I was, what had happened to me. I'd been shot and raped. The man never opened the door. He just spoke to me from behind the door. He said that he would call and get help. I sit down behind a bush that was in their yard, still thinking, these guys can come back any time.

When I saw the blue lights, the police officers arrived. I told them my name was Dorothy. I told them that I had been raped and shot and that those boys still had my babies. Dorothy was rushed to the hospital, unaware she had been shot four times. I was shot in my left leg, point blank in my forehead, in my mouth,

and a bullet brazed the left side of my neck. After surviving brain surgery, Dorothy woke to see her sister by her side. I said to her, Margaret, is this a dream? She says, no. I said, did my babies make it? She said, no. I said, did my babies make it? She said, no. I was so not expecting to hear that. I just couldn't even imagine.

I just couldn't even process what she had said to me. I was dumbfounded. Jasmine was shot above her left eye and Jamelia was shot in the top of her head. The girls' bodies were found dumped near the side of the road. The guys that committed this crime found out that I wasn't dead. near the side of the road. The guys that committed this crime found out that I wasn't dead.

The older guy went to the police station to say that he knew someone who was involved. 19-year-old Richard Henyard tried to pin the attack on his younger accomplice. The police officers were playing good cop, bad cop, and that's how they were able to find out who did what. Both men were convicted of kidnapping, sexual battery, and murder. 14-year-old Alfonza Smalls was sentenced to eight consecutive life sentences.

19-year-old Richard Henyard was sentenced to death and executed in 2008. Jamelia and Jasmine are alive in my heart. Every year I celebrate their birthdays. I don't celebrate the death. I celebrate their birthdays. I don't celebrate the death. I celebrate their life. I survive because God has a greater plan for my life. I can let you know that there is life after death. I met a young man who really helped me feel good about myself again.

We got married. And three years after we were married, we had a little boy who's now 15. That has brought me so much joy. I feel as though Joshua is a gift from God. Life is good in spite of. Life is good. These days, a lot of people are learning about all the benefits of fasting, like weight loss,

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It's 75 yards wide and almost a mile long. They're the most beautiful berries. They're as big as the end of your finger. Over the four years that I've picked this patch, I have run several bear out of the patch, but all you have to do is take your little pistol, you know, and run up there and pop, pop a couple of times. And a bear most of the time will find somewhere else to go. One morning, Jim drove up the road and parked near the blueberry patch.

I left my cell phone there because there's no cell service. So there's no sense in taking it. I went up the mountain about a quarter of a mile, and I started picking blueberries. And I guess I was picking probably for a half an hour and hadn't seen anything or anybody, and just by myself in the woods, just enjoying the woods and the blueberries, of course.

I saw a big blueberry bush out a little ways back out in the patch, and I thought I'd go out there and pick berries off of that bush. It was about a four foot tall bush. I got there, and I set one of my buckets down on the ground, and then I took the other bucket and was putting berries in that bucket. All of a sudden, I felt a huge bump on my leg. It sounded like a sledgehammer and felt like a sledgehammer. It knocked my leg completely out of and under me. I saw a big, black-headed rattlesnake come off of my leg. As he pulled his head out, the fangs out of my leg,

there was two shots of blood that followed his fangs. He was huge. That snake, I have never in my life seen a rattles, a timber rattler that size. I had just had a vertebrae taken out of my back about the middle of the year before. And I couldn't bend down to see the snake, so I just leaned sideways to where I could see him.

But then I saw him come up to strike again. Two strikes would have definitely killed me. A four-foot rattlesnake bites Jim on the leg when he is out alone picking blueberries. A recent back injury prevents him from evading the snake as it rises to strike again. When I looked up and saw the snake come up to strike again, I knew I had to kill it because I couldn't get out of the way.

I drew my pistol, flipped the safety, and I couldn't get down to aim, so I just threw it down and fired. Luckily, it was a perfect shot. I couldn't have put it on his neck and hit him any better. I told him, I said, old boy, you got me, and you got me good, but I'll guarantee you, buddy, you ain't going to never hurt nobody else. And I put my gun right on top of his head and fired down through his head.

I felt the venom. It goes through you so quickly. By the time I shot the snake and put my gun in my pocket, my whole head and upper body felt like it was on fire and had exploded. In my heart and my mind, I will admit, I knew I was dead. I pulled my pocket knife out of my pocket, and I reached admit, I knew I was dead. I pulled my pocket knife out of my pocket, and I reached down, and I stabbed my leg six times

and cut 2 and 1 half inches, six cuts. I knew the venom was there and had to be removed. Of course, they teach not to do that today. You don't cut. You go to the doctor. But I did what was in my heart and in my mind to do that today. You don't cut. You go to the doctor. But I did what was in my heart and in my mind to do. I knew I was bleeding bad, but I wanted to bleed to drain the venom. I took my suspenders off, and I cut a section out of it, and I put a tourniquet just below my knee. I tightened my suspenders up enough that I could still feel a blood pressure below

the suspenders and blood pressure above the suspenders. That way I knew I hadn't cut the blood pressure completely off from my leg because if I had cut it off, I would have automatically lost my leg anyway. And my idea was to try to save my leg and my life. The venom was preventing Jim's blood from clotting, causing internal bleeding. There was blood oozing from my fingernails, from underneath my toenails, out of my mouth and my eyes, and every opening in my body was bleeding. I thought for sure I was going to die because I was bleeding rather profusely.

I mean, little at a time, but all those spots. At one time, there was a lot of blood coming. I had to get help if I was going to live at all, but I truthfully didn't think I was going to make it. By that time, I was already on my knees. I had no strength. I couldn't do anything. So first two or three feet, I went, I crawled.

And then I landed on my stomach. And I couldn't get back up. Like a snake, I started squirming and moving, because I knew I had to get down that mountain. I knew I had to get to my truck. I had to get to that cell phone to try to get help as quickly as possible. Jim was having a severe allergic reaction to the venom. My tongue was already starting to swell.

I mean, my mouth was full at that time. I could only go like three or four feet. And then I'd have to roll over on my back and open my mouth as wide as I could only go like three or four feet. And then I'd have to roll over on my back and open my mouth as wide as I could and just get air. Then I would roll back over and start squirming again. And then it got to where I was too weak to squirm. And then I'd roll to my side and roll. I fought my way down that mountain.

And I mean, I had to go over rocks and over downed trees. And, you know, and I had to fight hard. In excruciating pain, Jim made it back to his truck. It took me an hour and 45 minutes to go a quarter of a mile to my truck. I was on the ground. I had no strength whatsoever. But I worked myself up beside my truck. I wanted to get my cell phone out.

Even though there's no service there, they say that if you use 911, sometimes it'll work whether there's service or not. But I put the wrong key in the lock of my truck, and I couldn't open my truck, and I couldn't get the key back out, and then I lost all my strength again, and I fell to the ground. I lay there, and I thought, well, Jim, you lay here by this truck, and you're going to lay here and die, buddy, because nobody can see you up in these woods. You've got to get on the road. You've got to get out where people can see you. So I started fighting again and working and squirming and rolling and twisting

and whatever was necessary to get. And I made it to the middle of Coleman River Road. And that way I knew that they'd either have to run over me or stop one. And hopefully they'd stop. I prayed for everybody I could think of, everybody I knew, and even the ones I didn't know. I prayed for everybody. And then I said, Lord, please forgive me for my sins and make my home in heaven worthwhile.

In my lifetime, I have experienced death. I was struck by lightning. And it burnt all this pigment in my skin. And then I had a motorcycle wreck. I had six crushed vertebrae in my back, my brain was crushed, but nothing, I mean nothing compares to this rattlesnake bite. This was the most excruciating thing that has ever come my way. My body was in such pain, I truthfully thought that I was going to die in the middle of the road

because I didn't expect anybody to ever come. When I finally made it to the road, I was laying there and I knew that there's a very slim chance of anybody ever finding me because Coleman River Road is just an old rocky mountain road that no one ever travels. No one ever travels it. And then I thought of my wife. I love Janice so much. She's the sweetest person that ever came into my life.

Oh, I wanted to be with that little woman. Oh, please let me. Lord, just give me a minute more with her. And that's what I asked him. No sooner got that out of my mouth than the truck pulled up to my head. The man jumped out of the truck, ran around, said, what's the wrong, man?

What's the matter, man? And all I could get out was rattlesnake. They struggled and they put me in the truck. And it was a young man and his sister, Brian and Alicia. Alicia sat in the truck with me and she held my head and she said, sir, please lay still and put her hand in my chest. And we're going to get you out of here, and you're going to be okay. Brian called 911, and an ambulance met them on the main road. With the nearest antivenom 250 miles away, Jim was rushed to a helipad. When we were pulling onto the pad, one of the gentlemen told me,

it may be 20 minutes before the helicopter gets here, but we'll do what we can for you, Jim. My tongue had completely swollen and filled my mouth completely, and I was struggling to get air. I mean, struggling to get air. I heard the helicopter landing. It was so quick. And then they got me on the helicopter. In between the time they picked me up and the time I arrived at the hospital, I flatlined three times. Jim made it to the hospital and was given antivenom.

The doctor said that that snake bite, as big as he was and as much venom as he put in my leg, I should have been dead within 10 minutes at the maximum. It took me four hours and 10 minutes to get antivenom. I drained most of the venom from my leg, so they didn't have to amputate. They said if I hadn't done that, I would have lost my leg, at least to my knee. If you're ever snakebitten,

get to the hospital as soon as you can. Just go and get help as quickly as possible. I did what I did because I thought I was dead. And I knew if I was going to make it at all, I had to do these things. I survived because I made it down the mountain. I survived because Brian and Alicia picked me up when they did. The doctors in Mission Hospital were so efficient.

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consultation, then 50% off at pros.com slash survive. That's P-R-O-S-E dot com slash survive. to sing on i'm caitlin bristow host of off the vine podcast where i get real maybe a little too real sometimes with my friends and celeb guests from bachelor franchise and beyond i'm talking guests like jonathan vaness nikki glazer wells adams elise myers just like in this like business jacket like i would love Nikki Glaser, Wells Adams, Elise Myers. Just like in this like business jacket, like I would love some tacos. Heidi D'Amelio, Big Brothers, Taylor Hale. I have to bring it up because it happened and we're going to get through it. What I do.

And so many more. So come hang out with us, hear ridiculous confessions, and get a little vulnerable because you know what? We're all just floating on this weird little planet together. Follow, rate, and review Off The Vine Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. It's July 2008 in Niagara, Wisconsin. 20-year-old Bud is with his friends at a swimming hole under a train bridge. I had called everyone in my cell phone to go down there that day because I was just home from college. I wanted to go have fun with my friends,

and that was the place we always did it. It's about a 65-foot train bridge over the Menominee River, which separates Michigan and Wisconsin from each other. We were drinking beers and going swimming, seeing who'd jump higher on the bridge. And then other people started showing up, a lot of my friends, some people I didn't even know, just tons of people in and out all day,

because that's how it is down there in the summer. 17-year-old Katrina arrived with Derek, Tony, and her best friend Tiffany. Tiffany and I had been friends, I think, since fourth grade. We were girlfriends. We were sisters. We had fun. We always were together. After we had gotten changed, we went to swim across the river so that we could get to a cliff on the other side. It's a cliff that you could jump off of.

We swam across and walked up onto a path, a walking path. And as we had crawled up the path, we had noticed there was a man in camouflage. He was an older man. He had red hair. He's very scruffy looking. He had just a lot of facial hair. He looked dirty, like he had been there for a while.

Tony and Derek had walked up right up on top of the man, basically. He was crouched, in a crouched position. And I think he stood up immediately when he had saw them. He stared at us like he was, he was animal-like. He just stared at us and looked just scary. It was literally moments later that he had pulled out a gun and started shooting at us.

Katrina is with her friends Tiffany, Tony, and Derek at a popular swimming hole. As they walk along a path, a man in camouflage blocks their way. After staring at us, he had pulled out a rifle and shot Tony in the head at point blank range. He was maybe a foot away, but it was extremely close to him. And he, I don't think he could have ever seen it coming. He was shot in the head, and he had fallen to the ground. And we had all scattered. I had grabbed Tiffany's hand, and we started running back along the path.

I had looked back and immediately there were still shots going off, so it was loud. There were holes being put in the trees beside your head, and you could hear bullets just whizzing past your head, and you could hear that it was very, very close. Bud and his friends were on the other side of the river. We were sitting there just talking about school, and all of a sudden we heard loud booms. And my buddy John made a joke about someone's lighting off

cherry bombs, and we didn't really think anything of it. I think we were about maybe 20 feet away from him when Tiffany had fallen. And I went to go pick her hand back up. And I wanted to get her running again. And there was blood pooling by her hair and the leaves in the ground. And I realized, I saw that she had been shot in the head.

After the first couple booms, there was a pause, and then there was more booms. And that's when we noticed that there was rocks flying in the air. There was sticks. I realized something wasn't right. I got stuff, sticks and rocks flying at me all of a sudden. Something ain't right here.

The gunman was now shooting across the river at Bud and his friends. Once it finally clicked in our heads what was happening, my buddy Chris ran up the trail. And I had thrown Chris his phone and told him to call 911. I hid behind a rock. There was a small crevice back probably 10 feet behind me where I was standing.

I looked out to see what was going on, and I watched my friend Brian fall. Not trip, not stumble, just collapse. I just thought to myself, I can't see a friend just go down like that. It was only five, six feet from me to him. I ran as fast as I could and jumped down in front of him. I knew that if I got in between him and the shooter, he might actually make it.

So I propped myself on my knees right in front of, between his head and his body and the shots behind me. On the same side of the river as the shooter, Katrina saw two of her friends shot. She was running for her life. I realized I had to keep running and that I needed to keep going. So I immediately began running again back on the hill. And I had made it back up to the train bridge that we had originally started on.

And then I realized I didn't know if Derek was still alive or not. Katrina was separated from her friend Derek when they ran from the shooter. I heard him yelling for me, and he came back over. We decided not to go back across the bridge because it would be a fairly clear shot from where the man was as far as we had known. We didn't know where we were going. It was just as far away from the shooter as we could. I didn't know how far we would have to run. I didn't know

where we would end up, but that was our safest shot as far as being able to make it out alive. The shooting stopped, giving Bud a chance to check Brian's injuries. I saw three bullet hole wounds and all three of them were in the side of the head. One in the front, one in the middle, and one on the top. He was awake, barely, but he was awake, breathing very shallow, very short breaths. Then I was huddled over him with my back to the shooter, which was across on the Wisconsin side.

I was on the Michigan side. And second burst of shots went off. I could hear the zings of bullets. I could hear hitting the rocks. I could hear rocks breaking apart. I actually was grazed in the side of the neck with a stray bullet. And then I caught a few shrapnel in my back.

The fear I had was overwhelming. I've never been that scared in my life. As I was crawling away, I was screaming at him, stop effing shooting. Can't you see he's down? You got what you wanted. Why are you still shooting? Just at the top of my lungs, as loud as I could,

hoping to get some mercy, hoping that he would stop. But he never did. I wanted to stop, and I wanted to hide, and I wanted to wait for somebody. He told me, he said, if you don't keep running, we're going to die today. Katrina and Derek were on the same side of the river as the shooter.

We kept looking back to see if he was, like, chasing us or if he was still there. We didn't have shoes on. We didn't have anything. We were in our swimsuits, barefoot, just running on rocks and wood piles and just anything to get away from this man. There were still shots going on, but I couldn't really tell where

all the shots were going. It was just he was shooting everywhere. And I knew there were the guys that were across the river as well. I was trying to crawl away to just get out of the way because I could feel the stinging in my back. And I was on the ground in the dirt, crawling on my hands and knees.

It clicked in my head when I got about five feet away from Brian, play dead. Because you know, that's what they always say, play dead. I just laid there. I just laid there and cried. That's all I could do. Just laid there and cried, hoping it was over. It seemed like forever, but it really didn't.

It wasn't that long. And after the last burst of shots, after I waited a little bit on the ground, I got up, went back over to Brian, made sure he was OK, tried to keep him awake, keep him coherent. I was crying, and I kept telling him, don't leave me. Don't give up on me. Stay here with me.

I was down there for probably 20, 25 minutes with him by myself, just terrified. Didn't know what was going to happen, sitting there with a dying person in front of me. It was probably only a half a mile later that we had finally seen a house. Derek started knocking on the door, and I told him, what are you doing?

That we, I don't care about if they want to answer their door. I'm getting in this house right now. Immediately when I got into the house, I had went and I locked their doors. The couple in the house called 911. I decided to call my mom and I told her I can't believe I'm finally hearing your voice again. I never thought I'd be able to hear her voice again. I told her Tiffany and Tony were shot and that I wanted to go home. Police arrived at the scene 30 minutes later.

As soon as I heard someone at the top of the trail, I said, get down here. Get down here as fast as you can. EMTs show up five minutes later, and luckily, a family on a boat was going by the train bridge, and they loaded Brian onto the boat so they could get him to a boat dock and get him to the hospital.

And that was the last I saw of him. He made it through the rest of the night in the hospital. His parents and his family got to see him before he went, and still to this day, they thank me for that. As darkness fell, the shooter hid in the woods. The police arrested him at the scene the following morning. They caught the shooter and he was in custody. They told us that there were two bodies that were next to him.

He was right next to Tony and Tiffany. Scott Johnson was convicted of three counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder. He was sentenced to over 300 years in prison. Johnson was convicted of three counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder. He was sentenced to over 300 years in prison. I survived because I fought my hardest to survive. I don't know why I didn't run. I could have. They say everybody has a fight or flight response, and I chose to fight that day. I survived because a little bit of it was luck, but I think the other half is that I have more things to do

in life, and that just wasn't my time. Tiffany would have done huge things, and I need to do those for her now. Now that Brian's gone, I never forget him. I have an armband that I wear every day, all day. I take it off when I go to sleep. I'm just never going to let him go. I can't let myself let him go.

I go back to the East Kingsford train bridge at least twice a week. I'm not going to let that event ruin that beautiful place. I'm just not going to.