Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Couldn't Breathe and I Remember Feeling Like I Was Falling Asleep
Episode Date: February 14, 2026Anita is abducted and put through a horrifying eight day ordeal by a man who forces her to live inside a metal box. Brothers Jim and Glen are struck by lightning on top of the highest mountai...n in the continental United States. Sabret is working as a propane truck driver when she is attacked during a delivery and decides to fight back.This Episode is sponsored by BetterHelpApartments.com - To find whatever you’re searching for and more visit apartments.com the place to find a place.BetterHelp: Visit BetterHelp.com/SURVIVED to get 10% off your first month!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This episode contains subject matter that may be disturbing some listeners.
Listener discretion is advised.
That's when he told me he didn't take me to rob me.
He had sexual needs and I was there to fulfill them.
Real people.
The wounds were like somebody taking a branding iron and branded me.
It wasn't blood.
It was melted flesh and body parts.
Who faced death.
I couldn't breathe.
I'm losing.
it. And I just, everything just tunneled out and lights out. And live to tell how. And then he would
offer me dinner, watch a movie, and he would write me again before he would put me in the box
for the night. This is I survived. It's June 1998 in Kokomo, Indiana. Anita is a 21-year-old who
lives with her parents. She has just finished college and is working the afternoon shift at the post office.
My mom came in on the morning of June 25th and woke me up, told me I need to be up and doing stuff and, you know, just graduated college and wanted to sleep in.
And at that time, she left for work and I went back to sleep for a few hours.
By 10 a.m., both of Anita's parents had gone to work.
And the next thing I know, the telephone's ringing in the door, there's a knock on the door.
And I answered the phone, ran over, answered the door, and Victor Steele was at the door.
Anita had previously worked at a gym where Victor Steele was a member.
He was a loner, just kind of kept to himself.
He treated all the women kind of like he was interested in them
and just wanted someone to hang out with or wanted a girlfriend, that kind of feeling.
The gym closed in May of 97, and I started a job at another place,
so I hadn't seen Victor Steele in over a year.
I just woke up.
It didn't have time to hit me on why is he here.
He asked for a glass of water.
I know he rode his bike.
It was really hot out that day.
It just, it never really dawned on me that, hey, why is he at my house asking for a glass of water?
I had stepped on a tack on the way of the door, and I bent over to clean up the blood from my toe.
Then I felt this shock in my back, an electrical current.
And I started screaming and fighting.
I didn't know what was going on.
My mind just went like in panic mode.
I was, what was that?
What's going on?
I didn't know what it was.
He hit me again,
and I could just fill the electrical currents,
and I'm still fighting,
and at that time he reached around the front of me,
and when he reached around,
that's when I could see it was a stun gun,
and when it hit me,
then I lost all control of my legs and fell to the ground.
When I fell to the ground,
he put his knee in my back,
and started tying me up,
and my mind's like, what is going on?
And he starts talking,
and he says, I'm going to rob you.
I need money.
I need to know where your bank account is, what your pin numbers are.
He tied me up with zip ties.
He put my hands behind my back and put those on my hands and my feet.
And told me he was very serious about this and pulled a handgun out,
even unloaded it, like to show me there was bulletin it and put it back in.
And he's shaking the whole time.
And I'm just like, put it away.
But I believe you.
I believe you're serious.
Because, you know, he's shaking.
And I'm thinking, at any time this could go off and he could kill.
me by accident. He put the gun away and he said, you know, I'm going to go get the money in your
purse and stuff. And I'm thinking it's all going to be over in the next few minutes. He's going to
be gone. And he tells me he has to take me with him. Steele forced Anita into the trunk of her car
and drove off. It was over 100 degrees out that day. I was already sweating profusely. And I'm thinking,
I've got to get some energy, you know, to try to kick the seat in and get out. Then he pulls
into a driveway, I can hear the gravel, and I hear a garage door open and shut, and then I panicked,
because I thought he's left me here to die. And a few minutes passes, and my mind's still whirling,
and he comes back and opens the trunk. And that's when he told me he didn't take me to rob me.
He had sexual needs, and I was there to fulfill them. My hands were still bound. He had
sat me on his lap and made me start kissing him.
He's probably like 5-10,
overweight, white male with beady eyes,
greasy hair, you know, just dirty.
And I just, I mean, I felt like I was kissing a toad.
You know, I think growing up and just being a female,
I always just thought I'd rather die than be raped.
And when it came down to it, I'm like, I want to live.
And whatever I have to do to get myself out of this situation,
I will.
And especially when he said,
if you don't comply,
I'll just kill you and find someone else.
Well, why have two families suffering?
He raped me repeatedly in the garage,
and then he started packing
because he told me he was taking me somewhere.
He put me in the truck,
and I was allowed to sit in the front,
but my hands and feet were bound.
And he just started driving.
He took all these country roads,
wouldn't take any interstates.
And, you know,
I just kept trying to think of escape.
plans and what to do.
Steele told Anita he was driving her to Wisconsin, two states away from her home in Indiana.
On the way to Wisconsin, he said he hoped that I would forget about my family and fall in
love with him.
We drove about 10 hours to La Crosse, Wisconsin, and that's where he had rented a place he
was going to open as a used bookstore, and he took me into that facility.
And there was a three-by-five metal wardrobe cabinet laying on the ground, and
And he told me that's going to be my bed.
And, you know, he was like, and you need to get in it.
And he cut the straps off my arms, and he let me get in it.
And I could hear him doing something at the top, you know, his way of locking it.
And, you know, for that moment, I'm like, I'm safe.
You know, I'm away from him.
I'm okay.
You know, the box became my safe haven.
On the morning, after we got to Wisconsin, he took me out the box and he raped me.
and then wanted me to play games with him and watch TV
and kind of things like a girlfriend would do.
And then, you know, he would rape me again.
He would put me in the box for a while,
then take me out to be raped again,
and then he would offer me dinner, watch a movie,
and he would rape me again before he would put me in the box for the night.
On the second day, he opened the box,
and it was just like the same routine.
He let me go to the restroom.
He raped me.
We played games.
Everything was board games.
There was, you know,
Monopoly, card games, cribbage.
You know, it's a balance system.
It's like, play games, be raped.
Well, what's gonna win?
So I would play as many games as he wanted,
watching many movies as he wanted.
I don't like sci-fi, but I sure acted interested in it.
I knew if I lost every game, he would know I was
is planning. So I just tried to lose the majority of the time, let him win. He would talk about
how, you know, he enjoyed playing games with me, just kind of, you know, I think just trying
to get me convinced that, you know, this could work and we would be happy together. And, you know,
in my mind, I'm thinking, were you not taught? That's not how you go about getting a girlfriend.
You don't just take one. I really just figured it was going to go on until I gained his
I found a way to escape or the police found me because I knew people were looking for me.
That night when he put me in the box, I was okay with it.
It became my safe haven.
When I was in the box, I knew he couldn't touch me, he couldn't hurt me.
I had time to pray, I had time to think about my family.
Third day was basically like the first and second.
You know, he would take me out, let me go to the restroom, rate me, feed me lunch, rate me, play games, watch TV,
and write me again and then put me back in the box for the night.
I thought every day that I might die.
This guy is obviously crazy.
He could snap at any minute.
When I become unuseful to him, he's just going to dispose of me.
Every time he would put me in the box, he would say,
if you try to get out, I will kill you.
He said, if you try to make any noise, scream for help, I will kill you.
He told me he would make fake noises, he would play tapes.
He would try to do things that would make me think
other people were in the house,
and if I screamed for help, he would kill me.
I never knew when he left or when he was there.
So I had all these ideas of how to get out of the box,
but my fear was he was going to be sitting right there
waiting and testing me and that he would just kill me
when I got out.
The eighth day, he opened the box and let me go to the bathroom
and he raped me.
And then he put me
back in the box because he wanted to go get some lumber supplies.
While he was gone, you know, and of course I didn't know if he was really gone or not,
you know, I hear this loud noise on the door and the door gets kicked in like you can hear it.
And it's like, please search warrant.
And I say nothing because it sounded so much like it was, you know, a TV show.
You know, I was scared enough of him of all the threats he had made that, you know,
I had to think this could be a tape.
and that if I scream for help, then he's going to kill me.
I hear him go, first room clear.
And I thought, what if it really is them?
And they're going to leave and not find me.
And, you know, I'm starting to panic.
Then they actually come into that room, and I can hear it.
They're like, in here.
Suddenly, the doors of the metal box were opened.
When they opened it, there was, like, five police officers all in squat gear.
They're all sitting in over me, and I'm like,
I'm just like, thank God.
I'd take me home, just, and one guy just scoop me up and wouldn't even let me walk.
And, I mean, you know, it was over.
The police were from her hometown of Kokomo, Indiana.
They immediately called an ambulance for her.
When they put me in an ambulance, I'm just, you know, I'm bawling.
I'm, you know, hyperventilating.
And, you know, they're trying to call me down.
They're like, it's okay.
It's over now.
And I still understand.
I'm like, I haven't cried in eight days.
And it just all really.
Anita was found because a neighbor had seen Victor Steele at her house in Indiana eight days earlier.
The FBI placed Steele's mother under surveillance, and when he phoned her, they found his exact
address in Wisconsin.
During the trial, he wanted to be his own attorney, so he was allowed to question me, and
he tried to make it seem like there's no way he could have done it, and his defense was that
I was in with the police and the FBI because I hated him, and we were.
made up this whole scenario.
Victor Steele was sentenced to life plus 25 years with no chance of parole.
The judge said it was one of the worst crimes she had ever dealt with.
I survived because I have a message that needs to be sent out to other women that you can get through this.
Everything's going to be okay.
And, you know, life goes on.
There's wonderful things out there for you.
I was able to use my mind to really just think everything through.
and that allowed me to stay calm and keep him calm.
I think because he was so nervous,
I felt like I really had to go the other way
and keep him calm or he was going to do something stupid.
Anita's abduction and rescue are still used as a case study
to train FBI agents.
I played the what-if game for a long time
until my therapist and the police said,
you did everything right, you're here, you're alive.
And if you continue to do the what-ifs,
it's going to kill you. And I could really tell it, like, you get depressed because you're like,
what if I would have tried to escape or I could have done this different or, you know, and it really
emotionally will tear you down. So I had to learn real quick that they're right. I'm here. I'm alive.
And everything's going to be okay. Finding the one can feel impossible. And in today's world,
it's even harder. False profiles, inaccurate pictures, incompatibilities, ghosting on dates. Is this sounding
familiar, but if you're ready to make your move to a new place, it doesn't have to feel like dating.
All it takes is a simple search on Apartments.com to find your perfect match.
Whether you're looking for a three-bedroom condo downtown, a two-bedroom duplex in a quiet
neighborhood, a cozy studio in a walkable city, or even a single-family home in a
cul-de-sac, you can find a place that checks all the right boxes.
So whichever stage of life you're in, settle down in your perfect home by using Apartments.com.
No more swiping and awkward first dates.
Make it easier to get a place that gets you.
Visit Apartments.com, the place to find a place.
It's July 1990 in Mount Whitney, California.
Jim and older brother Glenn decide to climb Mount Whitney with their friend Khalif.
They plan to hike to the top of the mountain and back down in a day.
I'd always known about Mount Whitney.
It's the highest mountain in the lower 48 states.
It's about 14,500 feet.
and so that's pretty significant.
It was just a gorgeous morning.
It was totally still, no wind.
As pilots often say, it was severe clear.
After four hours of hiking, Jim, Glenn, and Khalif reached the final stage of the ascent.
We were approximately 500 feet from the summit, and it's starting to get a little bit dark,
starting to feel a little bit of wind, and it felt like maybe a thunderstorm.
might, you know, be upon us.
All of a sudden it started to rain.
I remember seeing these raindrops hitting
and splattering on the rock around me,
and they were the biggest raindrops I've ever seen.
It was like a cup of water per drop.
The three hikers reached the summit of Mount Whitney at 2 p.m.
The Whitney summit has a lot of big boulders on it,
and it's very bleak.
I mean, it's just boulders.
And then on the very top, the very summit,
is this hut.
It's an old stone building that was constructed at the summit of the mountain over 100 years ago.
The shelter had an old wooden door on the front, and I remember barging through,
and there were 10 people already in the shelter.
With us joining the people inside, we filled the place.
We were relegated to the back corner where there had been an old stove, apparently, in the shelter.
We were all crammed in there pretty tightly,
And I remember there was a fellow sitting in the middle.
His name was Matt Nordbrock.
Physically being in the center, he was also kind of the center of conversation as well.
And so then at one point, I remember Matt counting heads and said,
geez, there was 13 of us.
And yesterday was Friday the 13th.
And we were all kind of joking about that a little bit.
Somewhere along the line, we heard a distant, very distant rumble.
And you could hear the rain on the roof.
the tin roof. We really weren't talking about the weather months. We were just having a good time.
All of a sudden, I remember hearing what sounded like the loudest explosion I had ever,
ever heard in my life. I mean, it just, that air just exploded. I felt this incredible jolt
through my body. And I remember seeing a flash that just filled my head. And knowing
that something was terribly wrong,
and trying to scream, trying to say something.
And that all happened in an instant.
I felt something, I saw something, I heard something,
and that was a bolt of lightning that hit the shelter we were in
and came in and hit me.
And that was the last of my recollection.
When the lightning struck, I didn't see any flash of lightning.
I just heard these loud, piercing little bangs.
And it was almost like a bunch of small, very sharp explosions, multiple explosions,
like somebody was shooting a machine gun.
And I remember thinking, gee, what in the world could that be?
My first concern was, geez, how is Jim?
He was to my left, sitting right next to me.
And I tried to look towards him and then realize, well, nothing on me.
is moving. I mean, my eyes were moving, but I couldn't move my head. I couldn't move any of my
limbs. And so I'm going, uh-oh, this is not good. And then some seconds later, I realized I could
move a little bit. So I kind of rolled over and look at Jim, and he was unconscious. He was
just out. His eyes were open. He was staring up at the ceiling, and I thought he was dead.
When I looked at Jim, his eyes were open, but they were kind of rolled back, and he wasn't breathing.
And so I thought he was dead.
Glenn immediately began to give Jim CPR.
And after doing that maybe four or five, six times, he started to breathe.
There was a lot of chaos going on, and people were saying, well, we got to get out of here.
And I'm saying, well, I'm not going to leave Jim.
And he's obviously not going anywhere because he's unconscious.
Glenn's friend Khalif and another hiker volunteered to go down the mountain to get help.
Glenn began figuring out what had happened during the lightning strike.
Poking out of the roof is this tin pipe with a little cone on the top, which is a stove pipe.
And that point actually is literally the tallest point in the continental United States.
The stove had been removed, but the metal pipe still protruded inside the hut.
the hut.
When the lightning gets to that point, it's got to go someplace.
And I'm sure that it went down Jim's back and part of my shoulder and back.
I remember the most surreal episode of waking up from this unconsciousness.
I had this intense, intense pain in the center of my body and my core.
I felt like maybe I was or maybe I wasn't alive still.
Jim was unconscious for probably about 20 minutes and started to move.
kind of as though he had spasms in his back or something like that.
And we go, well, that's sort of a good sign.
At least he's moving around.
As I woke up from my unconsciousness and I opened my eyes,
I saw all these other eyes looking down at me,
but of course the eyes that I saw first were my brother's eyes.
And he had this look of relief on his face.
We just kind of sat him down and explained to him
what had happened, lightning had started.
rock he'd been unconscious in that Khalif and another fellow had gone down for help.
I looked over at my shoulder and here was a big black hole in the jacket.
And it was pretty uniform. It was pretty round. And that's where the lightning bolt had literally
hit me. There was no blood. I had terrible wounds, but the wounds were literally cauterized.
They were like somebody had taken a branding iron and bronze.
branded me. It wasn't blood, it was it was melted flesh and body parts.
After Jim got up and seemed to be pretty well okay, my focus then kind of turned to,
well, what else is going on in the shelter in the room? And I realized that this other fellow
was down and I come to find out later was Matt Nordbrock.
And I just remember it was chaos because CPR was being performed on Matt.
And we didn't know his status, but he wasn't breathing,
and his heart wasn't working.
At 14,500 feet, there's hardly enough oxygen
for you to breathe yourself, let alone rescue breath for somebody.
So people would work on Matt for a couple minutes,
and then they'd be completely exhausted.
So it was a tag team effort.
We worked on Matt for quite some time, about four hours,
and we were pretty,
pretty worn out both physically and emotionally.
We would peer outside and it was clear now.
And it had cleared because it started blowing.
The wind started blowing so hard.
All of a sudden we started hearing something that was not natural.
It was a rhythmic sound.
And pretty soon it got louder, but we all went running outside and hear at not much higher
than eye level to us is this helicopter hovering.
So there was this huge relief that somebody's here for us.
And then we watched them for a minute, and they couldn't do anything for us because they
couldn't land.
And he was getting buffeted about quite a bit.
And so I just went out there to try to direct him in and also to kind of act as a wind
And at about that time, the helicopter peeled off
and disappeared below the horizon of the mountain.
And we're going, oh, that's great.
What's, you know, I guess he's not going to be able to land.
So we all of a sudden felt like there was our rescue,
and there they just flew off.
And so with that, we were back to square one
and we felt completely isolated.
Here we are 14,500 feet above sea level.
sea level and we felt like we were on the moon. We had no idea what was going to become of us.
We probably had been sitting in the shelter for about another 10 minutes or something.
And all of a sudden the door flew open. And here was this guy in a flight suit. I mean,
it was the greatest feeling I had ever had because he was our rescue. And he was all business.
He, I think I remember him saying, you know, who's injured?
And right away everybody pointed at me.
And he walked over and he assessed me quickly.
No, no, ifs, or buts, you're going.
The rescue helicopter had been able to land further down the mountain.
He basically threw me in the back of the helicopter.
Glenn ran out with me and, and I don't ever recall telling him I loved him before,
but I certainly do at that point in time.
And it was pretty emotional.
And I just knew he was in good hands.
And it was kind of a poignant moment,
but glad to see that he was going to sleep in a bed that night.
The EMT actually had to stay in order for Jim
to get on the flight back down.
They were that close in terms of their payload.
So in a way, we were kind of disappointed
that he couldn't take Matt off as well.
And I recall after the helicopter left,
I was working on him.
and he was still warm, and he was still supple,
and we just weren't going to give up.
So the helicopter took me off the top of the mountain,
and there was the beautiful town of Lone Pine,
some 10,000 feet below.
He said, we'll have you at the hospital in a couple of minutes.
When I saw Jim in the hospital, it was just such a relief
that to see him, he was in bandages from his shoulders
down to his ankles.
So in a way, he kind of looked like a mum.
He was mobile. He was getting around just like his normal self and it was great to be down the ground with him.
It was a good moment.
The medics were unable to revive Matt.
It really kind of cast a pall on everything.
We're so happy to be down and so happy that we were in relatively good shape,
but to have lost a guy up there was tough.
It's hard to see, but
But the lightning bolt entered me right here.
This was a big tennis ball size burn and started here,
and then it just grounded out throughout my body
wherever I was touching the floor and the walls
of the shelter.
This looked like a smashed tomato over here.
I had very severe burns on my shoulder blades
and on my side and back, my pants,
My pants and my underwear looked like I was shot with a shotgun.
Just literally hundreds of holes.
Going through something like this up on Whitney,
I realized how precious life is and that at any moment,
it could be over.
And so you want to live life to the fullest
and don't get caught up in the details and little petty things.
I survived because I was lucky.
and I also never gave up hope.
And when we were on top of the mountain,
as bleak as it felt and looked,
we knew there was hope,
and it was just a matter of time.
So we tried to keep a level head
and ultimately were rescued.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.
February always seems like the month
where love takes over the calendar.
Flowers, fancy dinners, heart-shaped, everything.
But not everyone has love figured out.
Many people are still finding their way when it comes to love.
Whether you're single, dating, married, or somewhere in between, it's completely okay to be figuring
it out.
Therapy can be such a relief in that process.
It's a space to unpack what's feeling heavy, what you really want, and how to take
the pressure off yourself.
Better help makes it easy to start.
They match you with a licensed therapist, someone who fits your needs, so you can focus
on the actual work of feeling better.
And if that match isn't quite right, you can switch any time. With over 30,000 experienced therapists and 6 million people who've already tried it, BetterHelp has helped all kinds of people reconnect with themselves and their relationships. So if this season of love feels a little messy, that's perfectly normal. And therapy can help you see the beauty in the middle of it.
Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash survived. That's Betterhelp.com slash survived.
It's July 2004 in Miami, Florida.
Sabre is working as a propane delivery driver, filling up gas tanks at people's homes.
One day, she's told to make a delivery off her normal route.
I pulled up to the address, found the address, pulled up to the address so that my back of my truck was, you know, right where it should be so I can just pull the hose down the driveway.
And for some reason, I just, I was sitting in the truck and I glanced up.
and this guy was crossing the street diagonally
right in front of my truck,
like not less than 10, 15 feet in front of my truck
when he just stopped.
And our eyes met for a split second.
And I just got this feeling like,
all right, I'm not getting out of my truck.
I don't know where that feeling came from,
but I just, no, I'm not getting out of my truck.
I stayed in my truck, I kept looking at him.
He turned around and walked back in the same direction
he had come from.
I found that very odd.
But at the same time, I thought,
I was struggling with, oh, okay, maybe I'm being, you know, I'm being paranoid, but I'm staying in the truck.
He disappeared around the corner.
I finished my paperwork in the truck, and I decided, okay, he's out of the area, he's not around, and let me go do my delivery.
And I remember just, for some reason, walking backwards up the driveway, which I never do.
The best efficient way to drag that hose up that driveway is throw it over your shoulder and legwork.
and I just decided to walk backwards up that driveway
because I just was still feeling a little creepy
but I'm, no, you're being silly,
but let me walk backwards up the driveway anyway.
I got to the tank,
connected the hose to the top of the propane tank.
I flipped the switch on the hose
to let the propane start filling,
and that's when I felt an arm around my neck.
And I got picked up in the air.
I remember getting slammed against the house,
the back of the house,
and I realized
just this is someone's choking me.
And I remember struggling to grab the person
that was behind me, but they were positioned
directly behind me.
We couldn't reach them with my hands, nothing.
There was nothing I could do.
No matter which way I reached, I couldn't grab onto anything.
And I remember losing, I couldn't breathe,
and I kept trying to grab my breath and I couldn't.
And I remember feeling like I was falling.
I was falling asleep, and I remember you get, I got, you get this seashell noise.
The only way I can describe it is it's a seashell noise in your ears, like a humming,
like when you put a sea shell up to your ears, and every, your vision tunnels out.
And I just felt, I literally felt the life go out of me.
I just felt, I just felt so helpless.
I'm sorry.
And I kept thinking that this is, when I got up this morning, this is not what I thought was gonna happen.
This is not at all.
What I had, this is not, it was not part of my plan.
This is not happening, not today.
I can't believe this is, and I, and all of a sudden I'm like,
this is really happening because I just felt the whole life gone to me.
And you get that, that seashull noise in your ears and everything just sort of tunnels out.
Like, like you're losing, I couldn't breathe.
I couldn't breathe.
I'm losing it.
And I just, everything just tunneled out and lights out.
And the next thing I remember,
I thought I was home in bed.
I thought I was late for work
because I kept hearing this voice yelling at my ear
like, get up, get up, like, but I couldn't see.
And when I started to be able to see,
I realized, wait a minute, I'm not home in bed.
I'm looking at the back of a house
and I sort of just peeked out of the corner of my eye
and I see this, I see the guy
that had just crossed my front of my truck earlier
and he straddled over me
with one leg on each side of me
going through my, my fanny pouch.
My reaction was to reach up without even thinking about it.
I don't remember even thinking about it.
I just remember reaching up as hard as I could
and grabbing him by the testicles
and thinking to myself,
because this is how silly your mind gets.
God, he's wearing baggy shorts.
I hope I reached up far enough.
And that really pissed him off, really pissed him off.
He went up behind me.
I was in a seated position at this point.
My legs out in front of me, and he's got his arm around my neck again,
and he is lifting me up in the air and dropping me.
And I'm thinking of myself, this son of a...
is trying to snap my neck.
And I'm holding on with both arms for dear life,
and he's lifting me up and trying to snap my neck.
And for some reason, the thought that comes into my head is play dead.
Play dead.
Play dead.
over and over play dead. And I did it almost exaggerated. Like, I couldn't believe he fell for it.
I just, I exhaled so loud and went limp, like so exaggerate. I just went, and I felt him just let go
just a little bit. I had my chance. I slid over to his right shoulder. I bit down as hard
as I could at his arm. I reached up with my hands, and I stuck my hands right in his face and just
raked his whole face. My finger.
ended up in his mouth.
I literally thought he had bitten my finger off.
I thought he had bitten my finger off,
because I didn't feel the end of it.
And I remember all of a sudden, I'm on my feet,
and we're going at it.
We're struggling, we're wrestling.
He throws me up against the back of the house,
puts his arm around my neck, and just starts wailing on me.
We're struggling.
He's hitting me.
He's just wailing on me, broke my nose.
I have a shattered kneecap.
I didn't feel if, at this point I don't feel anything.
And I remember he just for a split second, he stopped.
And he looked me right in the face and he said,
give me the effing money.
Sabre is carrying almost $1,000 in her pocket.
And my response, again, without even, I was just,
at this point, I'm so mad.
I'm so mad.
I just looked him right in the face.
I said, you know what, F you.
We went at it again.
I'm blocking his punches, trying to punch him back.
He's punching me.
I realized that there's a door next to me.
I guess it was the back door to the house.
And there had been people in the house, which I didn't know.
The lady opens, the door flies open.
The woman comes out.
And she's yelling on the phone.
He's going to kill her.
He's killing her.
He's killing her.
All I remember is him grabbing the pocket of my shorts
and ripping down.
And I had put the money, which was cash,
stuffed it into a bank envelope.
So it was a nice little.
you know, pouch of money. And I remember it going up in the air, like in slow motion, and me and him
are both looking at it, and I swat it with my hand. And where does it land? The woman on the phone,
it lands right in her chest. She runs in the house. He's done with me. He runs in after her.
And for some reason, instead of running off to get police or get help, I turn around and running after
By the time I catch up, he's got her by the neck.
To give me the money, give me the money.
And I remember just punching between his arms and hitting him right in the chin and hearing his teeth
hit together.
And there's a couple of teenagers in the room.
One of the teenagers had the phone.
She opens the front door and starts yelling at him to get out.
The police is coming. Get out.
I remember him grabbing his shirt and wiping his face and walking up the driveway, giving us a look like taunting us.
like taunting us, and then he took off.
The next thing I know, the cop showed up,
and they were on their walkie-talkies,
and they had caught him like two blocks away.
Sabre was taken to identify the suspect.
I walked right up to him.
I looked him in the face, and I said to him,
remember my face.
Remember this face, because I'm going to be your worst nightmare.
I'm going to go to every court hearing
that you ever get brought to.
I'm going to be there.
I'm your worst nightmare from this day forward.
Sabre suffered a shattered kneecap, broken nose, bruises, cuts, and bites.
He was HIV positive.
He had full-blown AIDS.
And every month going for the AIDS testing, I had to be reminded all over again that this idiot still had this power over me.
Luckily, I never came up positive.
Ronald Holloway had just been released from prison after serving 18 years for armed
robbery and murder. He was sentenced to another 20 years in prison for his attack on
Sabre. I survived because it was him or me and it wasn't going to be, it wasn't going to be me.
Not that, no, it was either him or me and it wasn't going to be me. It wasn't going to be me.
Finding the one can feel impossible. And in today's world, it's even harder. False profiles,
inaccurate pictures, incompatibilities, ghosting on dates. Is this sounding familiar?
But if you're ready to make your move to a new place, it doesn't have to feel like dating.
All it takes is a simple search on Apartments.com to find your perfect match.
Whether you're looking for a three-bedroom condo downtown, a two-bedroom duplex in a quiet neighborhood,
a cozy studio in a walkable city, or even a single-family home in a cul-de-sac,
you can find a place that checks all the right boxes.
So whichever stage of life you're in, settle down in your perfect home by using Apartments.com.
No more swiping and awkward first dates.
Make it easier to get a place that gets you.
Visit Apartments.com, the place to find a place.
Pluto TV has thousands of free movies and TV shows.
This is the mindset.
Free.
This is the mantra.
With movies like Joe Dirt, pixels, and 50 first dates.
This is awesome.
And TV shows like Survivor, Spongebob SquarePants, the Fairly Odd Parents and Ghosts.
Pluto TV is always.
Always free.
Hazzah!
Pluto TV, stream now, pay never.
You're welcome.
