Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Could Hear His Footsteps Getting Closer and Closer
Episode Date: March 29, 2025Jill and Ron fight for their lives in a terrifying home invasion. Randy is electrocuted while working alone up a 35 foot power pole. Julie is attacked by her ex-boyfriend after agreeing to go... talk with him.Apartments.com - To find whatever you’re searching for and more visit apartments.com the place to find a place.Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Hi, iSurvived listeners. I'm Marissa Pinson. And if you're enjoying this show, I just want
to remind you that episodes of iSurvived, as well as the A&E Classic podcast, Cold Case
Files, City Confidential, and American Justice are all available ad free on the new A&E Crime
and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just $4.99 a month or $39.99
a year. And now onto the show.
This episode contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener
discretion is advised.
He hit me across the side of the head with the pipe. And this time he broke my jaw in
two places and shattered my teeth.
Real people.
35 foot up a pole was not the place that I wanted to die.
Who faced death.
And he said, I love you, I love you.
And if I can't have you, nobody else will, and I will meet you in hell.
And lived to tell how.
I can't end like this for Ron and I, you know.
We haven't done everything yet.
We thought we'd do.
This is I Survived.
It's September 2008 in Fort Worth, Texas. Ron and his wife Jill live on a rural property.
The community is a very close-knit community. You tend to know the people that live close to you. You tend to know everybody that's around you.
Our neighbors had gone out of town and they had asked us to watch their house. So we got
on our four-wheeler, checked our cows, rode the four-wheel over to our neighbors and just
made sure everything was okay over there. Got back about seven-ish. Got my mom to bed
I guess about 830.
Jill's elderly mother had lived with the couple for many years.
Ron had finished his shower, came out.
He was going to check his email, and I said,
well, I'll flip this movie on.
And I heard something.
I wasn't sure what it was.
I thought Ron was asking me something,
and the TV had, you know, I just didn't hear exactly what he said.
And I remember I looked over at Ron,
and there was somebody standing there. We never heard him come in, and I didn't know exactly what he said. And I remember I looked over at Ron, and there was somebody standing there.
We never heard him come in, and I didn't know he was there
until he hit me on the head with a pistol.
The hit wasn't so hard that it knocked me to the floor
or anything of that nature.
But it was enough to get my attention,
and I jumped up out of my chair to turn around
and see what it was that hit me.
And I was confronting a man who was standing behind me, who
had a pistol pointed at me, and he was wearing a green mask.
I thought it was a sick joke.
But I asked him, what do you want?
He said, I want your money.
Give me your big money.
He just kept saying that over and over.
And I remembered looking at Ron thinking, oh my god,
this is not real.
I was trying to convince him to follow me into the kitchen
area, get him away from where my wife was sitting.
Ron led the intruder into the kitchen.
I got my wallet and took the cash that I had in my wallet
out and said, here it is.
And I was trying to reach it out and hand it to him.
And he just ignored me.
He had a length of pipe in one hand,
a pistol in the other.
I was thinking if I could just get him to sit one of those
down and take the money, it would kind of
relieve some of the tension.
Or perhaps maybe even I could grab the other, whichever one
that he wasn't using.
But he kept backing away from me as I
was trying to hand him the money.
And he backed, and he backed up.
And he kept that distance between us
until he actually got behind the chair
where my wife was sitting.
And I remember just keeping my eyes focused on Ron,
thinking, it's kind of, you know,
it's, if I just watch Ron, it'll be OK.
And without any forewarning, he struck my wife
in the head with a pop.
I felt this, like my head had just got jammed down to my shoulders.
And I heard this noise.
And I remember throwing my hands up to my head going,
damn, what was that?
And then I saw blood coming down my shoulders.
And I was like, oh my God, this man just hit me.
I don't, I'm just sitting here.
I'm not trying to get him. He just hit me. I don't, I'm just sitting here. I'm not trying to get him.
I'm, he just hit me and hit me again.
And I'm just like, God, is this, this can't be real.
It was just violent rage that went through me.
How dare you come into our home
and attack us and our sanctuary?
But my training as a firefighter and as a paramedic
told me I can't express that.
I have to keep that part bottled
and I have to approach him in a calmer, saner manner.
And I knew that I couldn't help Jill
if I lost my temper.
Jill was bleeding heavily.
And then I heard Ron saying,
very calmly, Mr. You don't want to do that.
And I said, no, you wouldn't do that to a man.
You're sitting there hitting a woman.
You know, that's really making you tough.
But it's not.
I was trying to appeal to anything
that would get his attention.
And he nonchalantly told her, or waved her away from the chair
and told me to sit down.
And I thought that this is better. Now she's got an opportunity. She's away from the chair and told me to sit down. And I thought that this is better now
she's got an opportunity.
She's away from him and it's gonna be
me getting closer to him.
And whenever I went to sit in the chair,
I figured that I could grab him from behind me
and just pull him into me
and we'd be on the ground wrestling,
but I didn't get that opportunity.
He hit Ron for the first time hard on the head. And I remember thinking to myself,
oh, my God, it's so loud.
It literally sounded like it echoed in our house,
and blood went everywhere.
My hands went numb and my legs went numb,
and it sounded like someone was talking to me through a tunnel.
My wife was screaming, and I was on the the ground and I thought he had shot me.
It was so loud.
And I could see the blood was just literally flowing from my face and dripping to the floor.
And I turned around and told him then, you know, what would your family think of you
doing something like this?
He said, I don't care about my family.
When you're a mom, you have a mom look.
It's what I call my mom look.
I remember trying to look at him like, this is my mom look.
You're supposed to say, I'm sorry.
I'm doing this wrong.
And he didn't.
He just looked at me.
And I knew then it was bad because there
was no nothing in his eyes.
Absolutely nothing.
Ron always has always taught, don't panic.
If you panic, it's not going to help anybody.
Don't ping.
Don't ping off the walls.
You got to stay cool.
And Ron tried everything.
He was like, take the little cash we have.
I'll take you to an ATM.
We'll clean any account out we have.
I think at that point we realized if we would have given him a million dollars,
he wasn't leaving.
He made us go back to our bedroom.
And I thought I saw an opportunity at that time.
I had a handgun in my closet.
If I could just duck into the closet very quickly,
I could have the gun.
The only problem at that point was
is that he had my wife between me and him marching us
down the hallway.
And I knew that if I'd ducked into there,
she was going to be vulnerable.
Ron hands him the jewelry box, and he throws it on the bed
and starts using the pipe as like a tool
to go through my jewelry.
I had a necklace in there that my son had made me
when he was in like the first grade.
He took that.
You know, he left silver bracelets and he takes that.
Just stuff that didn't make any sense.
Jill was closer to the door that led out to the patio.
And it was cracked open just a little.
That's how we knew how he got in.
That door was closed.
And it was just open.
He never closed it.
And it was an opportunity for Jill to run.
I made eye contact with her and tried to look at the door to tell her,
you know, this is your opportunity.
Run out.
And I remember thinking to myself,
I could run out this door, but then I probably
would hear Ron get shot.
At that point, after he got what he wanted in the jewelry,
he said that his hand's getting
awfully tired of holding this gun.
He may just end up shooting one of us right there.
And we told him that, again, you know, there's nothing worth harming someone for in this
house.
We will give you the whole thing.
You can take whatever you want.
My wife even offered up our laptop computers and her personal car, which was new. He asked,
where are the keys? And she said, the keys are in the car because I'll take the keys after I kill
you. That's when we knew that we were in a no-win situation. There was going to be no talking this
man down. He was so resolved in what he was doing, he'd already planned what he
was doing to the point that we were not going to walk away from this thing alive.
One of the things I remember thinking is, can't end like this for Ron and I, you know?
We haven't done everything yet, we thought we'd do.
We marched us back into the kitchen, at which point I tried to turn towards the butcher block
and get a knife to fight back.
He stepped around the corner very quickly with the gun
and told me, no.
He made Ron sit back down again.
That's when he became a very violent, horrible,
I am going to beat the hell out of somebody,
and it didn't bother him at all to do it.
Did not bother him at all.
It just was like another day in the office.
I saw him draw back with the pipe.
He was coming to hit me with the pipe again.
I was able to throw up my arm, my left arm to block the blow, and it broke my arm.
I could feel the arm break.
As soon as I jerked my arm back down, he drew back again, and before I could even get my
arm up again, he hit me across the side of the head with the pipe.
And this time, he broke my jaw in two places and shattered my teeth.
I was losing my balance.
Everything was starting to go upside down.
The blow had broken bones in Ron's inner ear, affecting his internal balance.
Only thing you could see on Ron were his eyes because everything else was bloody.
I'm talking from his head to his toes.
He was covered in blood.
And he hit the floor, and he's crawling to get back up again.
I had a clay pot on the metal.
I just picked it up, and I flung it.
It was the only time in the entire incident
that he ever took his eyes off of me,
and he threw his hands up to protect himself.
And I ran toward him.
I ducked my head down thinking, well, if he shoots,
maybe he'll shoot over me.
And I ran toward him.
Run on the other hand.
I don't know how he did it.
Came over the couch, around the couch.
But he hit him about the same time I did.
And we all went sailing.
I took his gun away from him.
And at that point, he broke away from me a little bit
and rolled over onto his stomach and started
to try to crawl and get back up.
And I jumped onto his back and was hanging onto his shirt.
And I had his pistol in my hand and him by the shirt.
And I actually put the gun to his head,
said a quick prayer, forgive me, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
The gun didn't go off.
And I was so shocked that he had been able to hold me
at bay this long with a gun that didn't have a bullet in it and
to take such a
beating. The next thing that I remembered was
they're on the floor and
they're up by the desk. I was able to take the pipe from him.
I tried to hit him with it, but instead of hitting him, I hit the desk that we were next to.
And I had pain shoot all the way up to my shoulder.
He was punching me in the chest.
He was punching me in the throat.
He was punching me in the face.
I think I hit everything.
But what I was aiming for, because of my balance being off so bad, the only thing that was
going through my mind at this time was, we've got
to survive. My wife's got to survive. I've got to survive. We have too much to live for
to give up, to die for something so silly, something so meaningless. It wasn't like I
was dripping blood. I was flowing so much blood that it was ridiculous.
I couldn't see for the blood that was on my face.
I could feel my teeth in my mouth as I was talking.
Pieces of them were falling out onto the ground.
I just wanted to hold him down.
I wanted the police officers to get there.
I wanted to find out why more than anything.
I wanted to have a day in court with this man.
I wanted to be able to look at him in the face
and have him explain to me what was going through his mind.
And Ron's hollering, get a knife.
We've got to slow him down because I
can't hold him much longer.
So I ran in the kitchen, got the knife out of our butcher block, and I ran back in there.
And at first, I think I went for his upper body, but I realized I will stab Ron because
their arms and legs and everything.
And Ron's like, just get him in the legs.
Get him in the legs as best you can.
I kept thinking, it's hard to get the knife
to go down into his leg.
And I remembered at one time I had to use both my hands
to push it down to go through his leg.
And I remember trying to stab him in the groin.
His mask had come off, and I could see his face.
And he was staring at me, and it was just empty, hatred.
How do I describe that?
I don't know how to describe that kind of look
in a person's face.
I remembered where my cell phone went flying, so I grabbed it. 911. We're being robbed. I've got a guy by a knife. And it's a robbery in progress. We have got the guy down. I haveure him any further.
Just try and keep him.
Hopefully not.
But yeah, don't use any more weapons.
Jill's elderly mother had been asleep in a nearby room during the entire incident.
I was on the phone with 911 operator and my mom opened the door.
And she hollered, cut that out or turn that down or what's going on?
And I hollered, Mom, go back in your room and close the door. I knew Mom was safe as
far as if we could keep him down. He's hollering stuff at us like, I want to die,
let me die. just craziness.
And Ron's, you know, no.
And I remember telling the guy, we don't want you to die.
We want you to go to jail.
We want you to answer for what you've done.
The shock to hear something like that was enough to completely take me aback. I wanted to be away from him.
We've exchanged bodily fluids.
We've been bleeding together.
My wife is bleeding.
You know, what's going to happen to us now?
This guy has AIDS.
He's brought it home to us.
What's your name?
Jill?
Please, Ron. We're all bleeding.
Who all's there with you?
My husband, my mom.
How did he get in?
I have the spooge or.
Hurry, ma'am, we're all bleeding.
The emergency crew arrived to find Ron still wrestling with the intruder on the floor.
They started to pull him off of Ron.
They put me in the kitchen and sat me in a chair and Ron is sitting in a chair next to
me.
And you can see it on all their faces.
It was bad.
We must have looked pretty bad.
And I hear the sheriff say, he's dead.
No.
No, he was just talking just a second ago.
He just told me he had AIDS.
He's not dead.
He's not dead.
Check him again.
No, he's dead. I couldn't understand how could he not dead. Check him again. I said, no, he's dead.
I couldn't understand how could he be dead.
But I didn't care.
And that's terrible sounding.
I didn't want him to die,
but I didn't ask him to come into my house either.
The coroner's report found that the intruder,
Heradio Ibarra, had died of multiple stab wounds.
This guy came in and changed our whole life.
Things aren't the same anymore at our house.
Ibarra did not have AIDS, as he had claimed.
Police found evidence that he had been watching Jill and Ron's house for some time.
My biggest fear wasn't so much for myself. How do I say that? But it wasn't so much for
myself. I was afraid of what he was going to do to my wife. Jill's not only my wife,
she's my best friend.
Ron always had told us, don't ping in a situation. Don't panic.
And I can remember when it was all over,
and a month or two or three down the road,
I remember I told Ron, at least I didn't ping, babe.
I didn't ping.
And he was, yeah, he didn't ping, babe.
We survived because we were able to take it one step at a time
in the situation.
We didn't let our emotions run away from us.
We focused on the task at hand and went one step at a time.
Ron just looking at me and saying, we're going to be okay, babe.
We're going to be okay.
That's what got us through.
That's what got me through. That's what got me through.
I survived because Ron was there. If my husband hadn't been there, I wouldn't have made it.
And probably my mom wouldn't have made it.
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It's October 2007 in Rowley, Iowa.
Randy is an electrical lineman.
Being a lineman can be extremely dangerous.
There are so many different facets of the job that you have to be concerned with that
could kill you or seriously injure you. It doesn't take very much electricity, for instance,
across your heart to screw the rhythm up or even stop it.
Randy got an after-hours call to a small rural town.
A fuse had blown on one of the power poles
that serviced the town.
There was a little bit of lightning storm in the area,
little rain.
It was getting dark, so the first thing I did was I took a spotlight back into the backyard.
Couldn't get the truck to it.
It was something I'd have to climb.
I put my climbing equipment on.
We have to wear strap spikes to each leg, and you wear a belt with a strap.
It appeared that one of the wires was actually touching the pole and thereby blew the fuse
in the fuse holder.
So I climbed to a position where I felt that I could push the wire out of the way.
It was 35 feet to the transformer on the pole.
Randy secured himself to the pole with a strap on his belt.
The belt has two rings on it on either side of your hips.
When you get in position to do your work, you take the strap around the pole and hook
it into the other side.
I realized that I couldn't quite reach the wire that was touching the pole, so I readjusted
a little bit.
I had to step over another wire on the pole in order to get in a better position to push it.
And at that time I felt the sensation of getting shocked.
It was like my whole body just kind of locked in the position it was in.
I can remember kind of tipping my head back and thinking,
there's no way this is going on this this isn't happening to me
I couldn't move. I was just frozen in that position. I felt a lot of heat
I saw a blue flash
Randy was held to the pole by his safety belt. I don't know how long the shock lasted for sure
It felt like an awful long time.
The energized line carried 7,200 volts, so I'm assuming that the shock involved at least
that much voltage.
There was lightning in the area that may have struck the line.
I've been asked how to describe that feeling, sensation of being shocked.
And it's difficult to put into words.
The best I can do is there's a scene
from the movie The Matrix,
where one of the characters picks up a phone
and he's drawn into it,
and there's kind of a staticky noise as he speaks
and is sucked into this phone, and that's the way it felt.
My body locked in that position for what seemed like forever but I'm sure was at
least several minutes and I was just totally at the mercy of the electricity
at that moment. So after what seemed like several minutes of being shocked, I was thrown away from whatever
caused the shock in the first place. I had a strap around the pole that prevented me from
falling all the way and one wire ran between my legs. So my left knee kind of caught that.
I was dangling towards the ground, very aware of how quiet and how dark it was.
That seemed to last for several minutes. I didn't have any control over my body at that point.
I couldn't move. I desperately wanted to get stood up again. I could not do that.
I couldn't sense myself breathing. I couldn't sense my heart at that time.
I had no sense at all of how I'd gotten in the position I was in or how I was going to
get myself out of that position.
It crossed my mind that I had either died or was in the process of dying at that point.
Being in rural Iowa in a little town of 200, in the dark, 35 foot
up a pole, was not the place that I wanted to die. Not the place that I wanted to
leave my family behind. After hanging there for a while, several minutes, I'm
sure my body started to convulse. I remember the sensation of my arms flopping around
and like a fish out of water.
I then started to regain some more control over my arms
and hands. I could move my head around.
I could see it was still dark out and I could look
down at the ground and see the spotlight shining up at me.
I grabbed a hold of the guy wire again and tried to pull myself up.
Just I didn't have the body strength to upright myself.
Hanging upside down put Randy at a risk of blood clotting in the brain and respiratory
failure.
I knew I couldn't hang in that position for very
long as well. All the blood rushing to my head and all I knew I needed to
at least upright myself somewhat so I was able to throw my left arm over
the wire that was running between my legs and kind of hang to the side.
I tried to assess where I had feeling at in my hands
and what I had control over.
My legs were kind of pinched in the position they were in,
so there wasn't any movement there.
There was severe pain in my hands and my left wrist.
To even attempt to move it at all
just sent waves of pain
up my arm. I could feel my heart racing.
Randy was suffering an irregular heartbeat caused by the electric shock.
I could really begin to smell the burnt flesh and one of my fingers on my left hand. I couldn't
seem to move.
And it was straight when I first got into that position, but the longer I hung there,
it kind of curled up underneath my hand.
At that moment, I decided I wasn't going to get myself down by up-riding, climbing down.
So I started screaming for help.
There were several houses within a couple hundred feet
of where I was hanging at, so I screamed for what seemed like
an hour or two.
I'd scream my name, who I worked for, what had happened,
and I needed help, and I just, I couldn't get anyone to respond to that.
I was really shocked that nobody responded to my screaming,
and I realized that I was probably gonna have
to help myself out a little more to get out of the situation,
so I kind of considered what my options were.
I tried to stand up again.
I figured that was the only way I was gonna get down,
but I just could not draw enough strength to do that.
I had a knife with me I considered maybe cutting
my belt and swinging out away from the pole.
Didn't consider that too long because being 35 feet up
in the air, I figured probably wasn't the smart move for me
at that point.
I realized I had brought my cell phone with me in a small pouch on my left side, got enough
strength to get my left arm over the wire again and hang from that side.
Then I was able to reach across and access that pouch with my right hand.
I got my cell phone out.
I put the holder in
my mouth. I used my mouth and my right hand, trying desperately not to drop it while I
was up there. Got it out, dialed my dispatcher, and I said, I just got burnt. I need help.
The local fire department arrives a few minutes later. The fireman that came up the ladder, all he did was he balanced me with his shoulder
in the small of my back and just kind of supported my weight at that time. And it was just incredible
to have that support and that human connection again at that point.
If I'd have been able to, I'd have hugged the guy
because I was just so happy to realize
that I was gonna get off this pole.
One of the things about my job is you have to be able
to stay calm when unexpected things happen.
The choices that you make can either add to the
danger of the situation or protect you at that moment.
Randy's irregular heartbeat settled down the day after his accident with no
lasting effects. He had one finger amputated, skin grafts on both hands and
nerve surgery on his arm.
I think I survived this that night because of my training, finger amputated, skin grafts on both hands, and nerve surgery on his arm.
I think I survived this that night because of my training, because of my commitment to
my family, and my desire to still be dad and all those sayings in my faith that night saved
me.
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It's September 1987 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Julie had just ended a difficult relationship. I dated Paul for approximately four years and decided the relationship was not going
to be the one for me. And he had been drinking and that abuse had increased quite a bit. So I told him I would be his friend.
We needed to move on.
I offered to go to AA with them as a friend.
But we could not be together anymore.
Paul continued calling Julie and leaving her flowers.
I wanted him to stop.
I just was trying to get it through his head
that there was no future,
and he needed to stop and go find somebody else.
One night, he asked me to go for a ride for him and talk,
and he said he wanted to tell me goodbye,
and that would be that.
So I said, no, I will go for a walk with you
because we lived in the same neighborhood. So I said, I will go for a walk with you because we lived in the same neighborhood.
So I said, we can go for a walk and you can tell me what you think you need to tell me.
And then you promise you'll leave me alone. And he said, yes.
Julie finished work at 1 30 a.m.
and met Paul at his house.
He was in the kitchen and he said, come here a minute.
He was in the kitchen and he said, come here a minute.
And I stood up and I looked at him and I said,
why, what are you doing, what's going on?
He said, come here and give me a hug.
But he had his hands behind his back
and he was acting a little odd.
So I said, what do you mean, what do you want?
And when I hesitated and wouldn't go,
he brought a knife out from behind his back.
When I saw the knife, I thought, oh, I am in deep trouble.
He has gone off the deep end.
And you know, I think your instinct survival kicks in.
That's the fight or flight and the adrenaline rush.
And my instinct at first was flight.
I've got to get out of here or I'm going to get hurt.
When I ran for the door, I discovered it was locked.
And the first lock I undid was a deadbolt.
While I was unlocking that one, he stabbed me in the back
at least twice.
And it's sort of like, ugh. you know, when it's a sharp pain
and a thud sort of all at the same time,
I guess from the force of the knife going in,
but kind of caught my breath and took it away.
Julie struggled to open the heavy wooden door.
I was holding on to the side of the door
just as hard as I could.
And when I finally let go, we tumbled to the floor.
He was sitting on top of me and the knife was like in his hand right above my face.
And I just focused on grabbing the hand, the wrist that had the knife in it.
And when I grabbed one hand, he would switch the knife to the other hand.
And back and forth for, you you know five or six times and I guess at one point I missed and
the knife came down and went into my chest.
I was flailing and hitting and bucking trying to get away and I believe I made contact with his neck because he gasped
for air and rolled off and I didn't even feel pain at the time. I think the
adrenaline was just flowing so much it was just get out, get out, get out. He was
kind of laying there in a ball sort of and that's when I took off for the door.
When I got to the middle of the road, I started screaming fire.
Because if you call for help, you know, statistics show that no one helps you.
It was 2 a.m. and the streets were deserted.
I remember it sort of like a slow motion movie, you know.
I'm running.
I can't breathe.
I'm thinking, why do I smoke?
I could breathe if I didn't smoke.
Not realizing my lung was collapsing.
And that's why I was having such a hard time running.
I'm thinking, if I can just get home,
I just need to get home.
I can call an ambulance.
I can be behind a locked door.
I was just, you know, tunnel vision to the house,
to the house, to the house.
And I could hear his footsteps getting closer
and closer and closer.
And I couldn't run any faster.
And I'm thinking, I'm not gonna make it,
I'm not gonna make it, just keep going,
keep running, keep running.
He caught up to me and tackled me, and we both went down.
And at that point, I just started screaming bloody murder.
And he was stabbing me wherever he could, you know, in the arm, in the shoulder.
And he put his hand over my mouth to stop me from screaming.
And he said, I love you, I love you.
And if I can't have you, nobody else will, and I will meet you in hell." I bit his hand very hard,
and, you know, wiggled my face to get away to scream.
And I got to the point where I couldn't fight anymore.
Julie's throat was then slit.
I was losing a lot of blood,
and I was to the point where I could not see.
You know, I was going into shock and I couldn't see.
So I finally had to, I rolled over to protect the front of me and I put,
he started stabbing me in the back of the neck.
So I put my hand over my neck to protect my neck and I just was crying,
please someone help me, he's killing me.
I just was crying, please someone help me, he's killing me. I know one of the stab wounds hit my skull
and it like cut a sensory nerve and it went numb.
Like, you know, I could feel it going numb
down my head, down my neck.
And I really thought, okay, I'm either dead or paralyzed.
Julie sustained permanent damage to the nerves in her face.
And I'm going to be laying here in the gutter
with grass in my mouth, dead.
What is my mom going to think?
You know, how horrible.
Right about then, when I thought that was it,
I was going to be a goner.
You know, I thought I am going to die in the gutter
with grass in my mouth.
And I know cheers were pouring
and I just could not fight anymore.
I hear, stop police.
An off-duty police officer who lived nearby
had heard Julie screams.
She came out with a gun.
At first he ignored her.
And I know he stabbed me two or three more times
and she yelled, stop police again. He ran away,
I could hear his footsteps running away. Next thing I knew, I hear two gunshots.
So I'm like, oh, I guess she shot him. Maybe I'm safe. Maybe I'm going to be okay.
Then we hear his car start up. So my thought at that point was great, now he's going to run over me.
Instead, Julie's attacker drove off at high speed. The police officer called for emergency backup.
She said, help is on the way, help is on the way. I've called it in, help is on the way.
And in the distance, I could hear sirens. Julie was taken to the hospital in critical condition.
was taken to the hospital in critical condition. I was stabbed 36 times.
Nine of those wounds were potentially fatal.
One in my spine actually, when they did the MRI,
it came so close to nicking the spinal cord.
The surgeon said he didn't think in surgery with a scalpel
he could come that close and not do any damage.
Julie's attacker was later arrested
and sentenced to six years in prison.
Julie has a permanent restraining order against him
and has moved to another state.
She still suffers physical pain and nightmares.
I survived because the will to live,
fight, adrenaline, God, and the police officer Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Bueller.
Mystery is free with countless cases to crack from Criminal Minds, Tracker and Matlock.
I'm a lawyer like the old TV show.
And thrills are free with heart-pumping hits like The Walking Dead and Pulp Fiction.
Correct the mundo.
Feel the free.
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