Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Pleaded to Please Let Me Live, I Won't Tell On You

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

Shauna and Brad are living with roommates in a house in Los Angeles when Shaunna’s ex boyfriend shoots the occupants and sets the house on fire before turning the gun on himself. Lee is on his way to sell the sandals that he makes when he is hit by another car sending his van down a 50 foot ravine and pinning his arm in the process. Emily goes to her mom’s house to get soy milk for hey baby. When she discovers an employee of her step father who was robbing the home, she is brutally attacked and left for dead. Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. 

Hi, I Survived listeners. I'm Marissa Pinson, and if you're enjoying this show, I just want to remind you that episodes of I Survived, 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 program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. He put his hands inside my throat that had been cut and he squeezed as hard as he could. Real people. Everybody in the house was dead. I'm bleeding to death and every time I try to do anything strenuous, I bleed more.

Who faced death? My fingers were gone. Rats had come down and had taken my fingers and were fighting over them. And lived to tell how. He just had this terrible, angry look on his face, and he was there to kill me. I knew it. This is I Survived. It's February 2012 in Los Angeles, California.

Shauna leaves Mario, her partner of nine years, and moves into a house with two roommates. I just started a new life. I was very happy. I had my own room in this big house with all these creative people. Eventually, my roommates introduced me to their friend, Brad, and we started dating, and we just became inseparable right away. Brad soon became concerned about the behavior of Shauna's ex, Mario. He made some threats on Facebook, actually, and then removed him later when one of his friends said, you can't say things like that,

you're going to get arrested. Brad kept saying, this guy's getting a little weird. He said, I could see that when you're on the phone with him or after he calls, you're upset. And he said, there's something about him that I don't trust. You should really listen to me. I have a good instinct for these things. And I said, oh, no, Mario's harmless.

Don't worry. He's just annoying. It'll be fine. I can handle him. One afternoon, as Brad slept, Shauna took a shower. My two roommates were in the house. I had a female roommate in the house. She just got off work. And a male were in the house. I had a female roommate in the house. She just got off work.

And a male roommate in the house who was probably sleeping. About a minute or two into my shower, I heard this loud popping noise. And I heard my roommate yelling. And I couldn't understand what she was yelling because the water was too loud. I heard the roommate screaming. And that was when I stood up and I heard gunshots. At that point, I realized there was a shot going off right by where Shauna was naked, taking a shower and vulnerable. I came out of my bedroom and turned to the right and looked toward the bathroom where the shot had come from. Brad saw Shauna's ex, Mario, standing at the bathroom door with a gun.

Mario had just shot their two roommates. I just started running at him. I think he heard me coming at him, because when he turned and I saw him, he had the gun in his hand, but he jumped. I heard some more yelling and tussle, and then the door kicked in. Somebody kicked in the bathroom door. So I thought, well that's rude, and I said, hey. So I decided, well I better get out of the shower, I'll finish this later.

I'm gonna go see what's going on. I closed the distance as quick as I could, and realized he heard me coming. I knew I had to get the gun from him or immobilize him, and I just began charging after him. And then the next thing I know, I'm coming at him. And I hear a shot go off. And a bullet went through my arm here, out the back, raised my chest, because I was currently in motion toward him.

I grabbed him. I twisted his arm and locked his joints up and hit him at the same time. His jaw went clean over his shoulder. Like, I hit him really, really hard. Felt his teeth crack together. I seized his hand, my wrist. I twisted it, and I felt his wrist cracking and bones separating and knew I caused severe injury to him.

So I left the weapon in his hand, assuming that I had control of the situation. And he wasn't going to be a threat after this point, because he was in a lot of pain. I really can't tell if it was my blood or something else on the floor. But I really started sliding. My feet slid out from under me.

And I just went head first to the ground, was face down like this. And I remember seeing feet backing away from me and thinking, oh crap, I'm in trouble. And that was when I heard another shot. After shooting Brad in the head, Mario lit fires throughout the house. Shauna, still in the bathroom,

had no idea what was going on. The smoke alarm was going off. Nobody's turning it off. So obviously there's still a problem. So I turn off the shower, put on a towel, step outside, and then I turn around and Mario's there. He just appears out of nowhere. And I'm like, whoa, what's Mario doing here? He shouldn't be here. I don't understand. Huh, Mario. Well, wait a minute. He looks mad. And then I feel this impact and this burning sensation. And I realize I've been shot.

Mario has a gun, and I've been shot. And I fell down from the force of being shot. And that's when I knew he was there to kill me. I couldn't get out. I was trapped in a corner. And he was in the way of the doorway to the kitchen and the doorway outside. He just had this terrible, angry look on his face and just glaring at me and gritting his teeth. And he was there to kill me. I knew it.

I picked up the laundry hamper, and I'm trying to block his shot, and it's the only thing I could grab. There's nothing else in the laundry room, and I'm just doing this, and he's trying to aim the gun, and he's trying to shoot me again, and I'm doing this, and he's only like eight feet away or less from me. Then he aims, and he shoots me in my right eye. Brad, who had been shot in the head, regained consciousness. When I first got up, I heard nothing.

No one moving. No sounds. I assumed everybody in the house was dead and that I was the only one alive. I had blood squirting out of my head and I decided to plug it with my finger because every time I would take a breath in, blood would squirt out, and I would feel more lightheaded.

So I recognized it as something, it was me bleeding to death, and I wasn't going to do it. Brad was unaware Mario had trapped Shauna in the laundry room. I'm laying on the laundry room floor, bleeding, afraid. I've just been shot in the laundry room. I'm laying on the laundry room floor, bleeding, afraid. I've just been shot in the head twice. I don't know what's going to happen next. And he's still there.

And I hear him say, now we die together, bitch. And he put the gun to his head and he pulled the trigger and then he fell on top of me. And I just thought, I don't know if he's still alive. And I just kept telling myself, you've got to wait. You've got to make sure. And I just counted to like, I don't even know, like 60.

Very slowly with all the Mississippis in between, just to make sure. When Brad came to, he crawled to the bedroom and called 911. I said, there's gunshots. There's an assailant in my house. He shot me in the head. I don't know where he is. You need to get somebody out here to secure this. I told them the address.

They were really hemming and hawing over something, the fact of, oh, well, it's on fire, so the police can't go in, and there's a shooter, so the fire department can't go in. So at that point, she said, if you can walk out and leave the residence, please do. And I just waited until I didn't feel him at all. I didn't feel him move. I didn't feel him breathing.

I'm hoping he's dead. So I shrug him off of me. I pull myself up on the dryer, just clawing my way up and blood all over me and very slippery and naked and wet. And I found a trail of blood that led to Brad in our room. And he was sitting there trying to plug the hole that he had in his head from being shot that was squirting out blood. And I was so, so happy that he was still alive. I looked and I saw Shauna on the floor, naked, covered in blood, unable to walk, trying to pull herself along the floor.

It wasn't a feeling of relief of, oh my God, she's alive. It was more of a feeling of dread. She's going to die here on the floor before I can get her out because I'm bleeding to death and every time I try to do anything strenuous, I bleed more. Until the shooter's status is known, emergency services will not

enter the house. I didn't see anybody coming in, so I was trying to, I had to figure it out myself and that was when I decided I'd plug my wound and try to carry her out. But I had to get her dressed because she was naked. And he said, you have so much blood. There's so much blood.

And he said, OK, we have to get out of the house. It's on fire. He put a shirt on me. He put some sweatpants on me. And he picked me up. The thing was, as soon as I picked her up, the strain started shooting blood out of my head again. So I had to plug it with my finger and carry her out. I started out the door with Shauna.

And there was a SWAT officer staring me down with an MP5 aimed at me. I started to pull him back into the house that was on fire because I was just afraid. I was confused and in shock and afraid and more men with guns. He probably thought I had a gun because I had my cell phone in my hand and had Shauna under her arms.

He probably thought I was the assailant and was perpetrating a hostage situation right out front. So at that point, I told him, it's my damn phone. I threw it down. I said, I've been shot in the head and in the arm, and we have multiple gunshot wounds. You show me where the goddamn ambulances are now.

Shawna, Brad, and their female roommate escaped from the burning house. Mario had shot my female roommate. He shot Brad, of course, and he shot and killed another roommate, a male roommate. He shot Brad, of course, and he shot and killed another roommate, a male roommate. When I found out, it was very, very sad and very angry. And I just felt really bad for his family because he didn't know Mario. He had nothing to do with this. Over 150 firefighters battled for two hours to control the blaze. In the charred ruins of the

house, firefighters found two bodies. One was Shauna's male roommate, and the other was Mario. And he blamed me for all of his problems. That's why he came after me. The other people just happened to be in the house. And that somebody was killed just because of me knowing Mario was horrible, is horrible. At the hospital, Shauna and Brad were both treated for gunshot wounds to the head. When he shot me in the right eye, that messed this up. So I'm now blind permanently in my right eye. But I did get to keep my eye. The bullet in my head is really still there.

Suffer facial paralysis from it occasionally, different nerve pain, a lot of pain every day. I just learned to try to live with it. Brad is my hero because I don't think that I would have even made it out of the shower if Brad hadn't interrupted him and had that struggle. I don't really feel I'm a hero. So to me, it's something I just take for granted

that everyone should do and a code of conduct everyone should have. I survived because Brad interrupted Mario when he kicked in the bathroom door and he broke his jaw and again when Brad picked me up and carried me out of a burning building. I survived because I'm strong. I have a good propensity to heal and come back from things that would cripple most people. It's how I've always been in my

life. It's how things happen. Had a lot of accidents, a lot of guns pointed at me, a lot of different stuff. It's just the first time it ended up on the news. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Hey, I Survived listeners, whether you love true crime or comedies, celebrity interviews, news, or even motivational speakers,

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best option for you fast. It's just one of the many ways you can save with Progressive Insurance. Quote today at Progressive.com to try the Name Your Price tool for yourself and join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company & Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. It's March 2000 in Downey, California. Lee, a sandal maker, is driving his van to a street fair in Los Angeles. He leaves his desert home at 3 a.m. for the 127-mile drive. By 5 a.m., Lee is crossing the Los Angeles Basin on the 605 freeway. There were several cars behind me and I was watching them. I looked sideways and when I did, I saw a car that their headlights were coming straight at me

across all the freeway lanes. I thought to myself, this fool's going to hit me if he's not careful. The next instant, I felt them smack into the side of my van and then all of a sudden I saw that the side of the freeway was coming up. I hit the culvert and my car takes off just like an airplane. Lee's van crashed over the guardrail and plunged 50 feet into a ravine. The van came to rest on its roof in a stand of trees. I was laying face down on on the ceiling and I couldn't pull my arm out. And I thought, okay, there was another car that was involved with it. He's gone off. People were behind us.

And I thought, well, I'll honk the horn and get somebody over here. So I reached up above my head, got to the horn button, gave it a big long pull and thought, okay, there, now I've got help coming. After a while, my hand gets tired from being up there, and I can start hearing the horn get weaker and weaker. The car that hit Lee had driven away, and no one else had stopped. I'm starting to feel not too good now. My arm's starting to hurt a little bit.

I can't get out of where I'm at. I got all this stuff on top of me. Can't figure out why I can't move my arm. And also, I'm inside my car, but I saw that there was a bunch of tree branches and leaves of the tree. And I thought, you know, I'm perplexed. I can't figure out what's going on here. As it became more light, I noticed that there's a hand sticking out of the tree branches.

And when I saw that, I thought, oh, my God, you know, I've killed somebody. I felt terrible. I thought I'd killed somebody, because I reached out, I grabbed the hand, it felt cold. And I shook it, and I said, are you OK? Are you okay? No answer. As it got lighter, I started realizing that on the thumb, there was a Y-shaped scar,

and that was on my left hand, too. And I realized that it was my hand there. As my car was coming down, the tree branches came through the windshield, and apparently the car, as it went over, it twisted this tree branch. Lee's forearm was trapped between two branches. My forearm was literally bent in a half circle inside of these tree branches. The weight of the van was on the tree branches, and the tree branches had my arm. I realized that I was in a bad spot and completely on my own. I was upside down on the side of the freeway, 50 foot below the roadway. My arm was wrapped around a tree branch, and there was nothing I could do about it.

The steep ravine hid Lee's wrecked van from the busy freeway above him. I had been in this position probably for about four or five hours. Nobody was coming for me, and I realized that I was on my own. It was up to me to get myself out of there. I carry a small pocket knife. It's about three inches long and it's just got a couple of blades on it. I took that and I started cutting away on the tree branch and periodically yelling for help. By that time, I could hear the birds singing. It was a bright sunny day because I could see the light filtering down to me.

Lee spent the entire day trying to saw through the branches with his pocket knife. The pain was just incredible by that time, although I was starting to make friends with it almost. I just would accept it and say, thank you for telling me that you're still hurting. I was pretty desperate by that time late in the afternoon. I was worried sick about my wife and what she was going through waiting for me to show up. And I'd been in so much pain and so much worry about, you know, what was my wife going through,

that I was almost dead, I felt like. And this pain in my arm, it almost felt good because it made me feel alive again. And I was sure I was going to die at that point. I'd been there all day long. Nobody had found me. And there was, I'd been fighting really hard not to pass out. And I decided, OK, I'm going to pass out and just get out of this.

I was laying there, and I started getting all itchy. And I couldn't figure out the itchy part. And as I would rub, I realized that I was covered in ants. With the darkness, for some reason, the ants showed up in the dark, and they were crawling all over me. And I could feel them in my eyes and my ears, just because I had blood all over me.

And I was dirty. The oil out of the engine had started to leak. It had come down and was ending up on me, so I was covered in engine oil, blood, and ants. And it was really not fun. It was just totally... It was intolerable, but it had to be tolerated because I had no choice. His family called the police,

but no trace of Lee or his van could be found. By Sunday morning, Lee had been trapped in his van for more than 24 hours. So on Sunday, as the day progressed, thirst became a major issue. I had no water, no food. Eventually I tried urinating into a t-shirt and trying to suck the urine out of it and I got a little that way but not much. And my tongue was getting really dry and it became like a walnut. It got really small in my mouth.

I knew I was in a lot of trouble. I knew I was in a lot of trouble. I knew I could die. I figured I would die if I didn't get out of this because I was obviously not getting any help. Lee spent Sunday trying to cut the branches pinning his arm. But it was beyond the powers of my knife and myself. It was just too big, too heavy, too green. Just wasn't going to, I'd only gone down a half inch of the close to three inches I had to cut. So I thought, well, maybe there's another way to get out of here. It's getting late in the day. I'm thinking the ants are going to come back.

There was no way I wanted to spend another night with the ants down in this hole. So I came to the decision that I was going to have to amputate my hand to get out of there. It had already turned gray, and the fingers on Saturday were sticking straight up. On Sunday, they were curled up like this. So I got my tourniquet ready. I had my knife there.

I take my knife. I go up to my wrist and thought that I would just be able to cut the hand itself off. So as I started to push in, the knife went in pretty easy for about an inch and then it stopped. I didn't hurt. I couldn't feel any pain. And then I was trying to go like this and the tip of the knife breaks off in there. And I thought, uh-oh. The knife tip snapped off as Lee tried to saw through his wrist bone. I thought, okay, if I can't cut the wrist off, maybe I can cut the fingers off. I took my knife, went up to the thumb, pushed and slid forward, and my thumb just popped right off.

I looked at it and I thought, wow, you know. And I went to the pointer finger and it was the same way, it just came right off. So I just kept going. As I finished with amputating my fingers, I had put them all in a little row right alongside of me there. You know, I was just going, wow. So anyway, I think I'm free. I just braced myself and my whole body would just pull in as hard as I could to pull my arm out, not even budging. And I thought, OK, well, maybe I can cut it off at the elbow. As I started to cut on my elbow, I heard a bunch of movement and I looked over and my fingers were gone.

Rats had come down and had taken my fingers and were fighting over them. And it really made me mad because those were my fingers and I didn't give them permission to eat them. I wanted my fingers. I wanted to take them with me. All I could think about was getting out and getting home. I just couldn't die there. I just couldn't see myself leaving my family without them knowing what had happened and how hard I'd tried to get back to them. I just... happened and how hard I tried to get back to him. Lee kept trying to cut his arm off at the elbow. I take my knife and I put it up against my hand and I push it in.

And as it went in, I mean, I thought I knew pain before that. It was like a bright light went off in my head. It was so, I can't even describe what it felt like. So I cut down and I started cutting around trying to get into the elbow joint. I couldn't get past the bone. I knew I couldn't cut through the bone, so I decided to take it off at the shoulder. At that point, I took the knife, I shoved it into my shoulder, and passed out.

When I came to, I couldn't find the knife. Monday dawneded and I realized that I was still trapped in my little cave there. All of a sudden I heard a voice said, is anyone in there? And I thought, what? I said, yeah, I'm here. I'm here. A transit worker sweeping the freeway had seen Lee's van and climbed down to investigate. After his 57-hour ordeal, Lee was cut from the wreckage and rushed to the hospital. At first they tried to save my elbow because it's very important for a prosthetic, but my forearm from the lack of circulation was dying and was in fact dead. It was necrotic.

And there was nothing they could do. They left it on for about two days, took me in and amputated my arm. When I first saw my wife after the recovery room, I could hear her talking and I didn't know if it was hallucination. And I looked up and she was there and she said, can I touch you know if it was a hallucination. And I looked up, and she was there, and she said, Can I touch you? And I said, Yeah, touch away. Here I am, you know.

Just seeing her again just kind of made it all worthwhile. I was really happy I lived. Two months after the amputation, Lee was making sandals again. This is how we make our money. So I had to get back in there and I did. Eventually I learned how to make sandals one-handed and I continued to make sandals for another seven years. I survived because I just couldn't stand the idea

of leaving my family alone without me. I never wanted it for myself. I wanted it for my family. The family is what got me through this. It was my driving force. For years, Tim Ballard has been championed as a modern-day superhero. The first time I saw one of the kids from the video,

and it, like, changed my life. He was the face of Operation Underground Railroad, a movement that inspired hope around the world by rescuing children from human traffickers. However, Ballard's crusade to save innocent lives has always hidden a darker secret. Oh, I think he's a pathological liar. Beneath the accolades and the applause,

a dark storm has been brewing. I mean, I can't find a time that he's told the truth about anything. Shocking allegations of sexual misconduct have surfaced, casting a shadow over his once unquestioned reputation. I am host Sarah James McLaughlin, and in this new season of The Opportunist,

we explore the rise and the fall of Tim Ballard. Join us this October for Tim Ballard, Unmasking a Hero. Subscribe to a new season of The Opportunist now, wherever you get your podcasts. It's July 2004 in Grape Creek, Texas. Emily and her friend plan to spend the day running errands with their babies. My friend arrived and I realized that my one-year-old daughter was out of soy milk. So I said, okay, well, let's run over to my mom's house that wasn't very far away

and let's just fill her bottle up with soy milk and then we'll go on into town and do what we had to do. Emily knew her mother was not at home and the house would be empty. I pulled up to the house about 10 feet away from the house. I told them that I would be right back. As I opened the front door, I seen that there was a man in the house. And as I got closer, I realized that it was Matthew Salazar, who worked for my stepdad on his construction crew. I looked to the side, and I noticed that all of my stepdad's guns were piled up in a pile. When I looked back at Matthew, he was headed towards me. He just started hitting me, and he hit me

over and over and over. And I just kept reaching for the front door. Because at that time, I was just standing right inside the front door. I can reach the handle, and I can turn the handle, but he just keeps pulling me back and hitting me and hitting me. I'm fighting him. I'm hitting him.

I'm kicking him. I'm doing everything I can, but nothing is hurting him. I was screaming. I was begging him to let me go. I told him that I wasn't going to tell if he would just leave me alone. He just kept dragging me and punching me. I told him that my daughter was outside and I can't die.

Please don't kill me. But he told me that he was going to kill me, that he had't kill me. But he told me that he was going to kill me, that he had to kill me. The only thing that I kept thinking about was my daughter. And I fought to do everything I could to get to her. I would kick. I would hit. I would do everything.

And he just kept dragging me. I couldn't see a rage in his eyes. It was more of just a blank. I followed him. I hit, I kicked, I screamed. And we ended up in the bathroom. He pulls out a knife. And it's a black serrated pocket knife

about that long. I begged and I pleaded to please let me live. I won't tell on you. I had to stay alive for my little girl. I told him, I'm all she has. I have a baby outside of my SUV. You have to leave me alone. I have a baby. Outside of my SUV, you have to leave me alone. I have to live.

And he just told me he was going to kill me. I remember blocking the knife. I was trying to protect my throat. I was trying to protect my sides. And this went on for what seemed like forever. All I could still think about was just fight, fight, fight, fight. I have to fight for my daughter. That's when I just dropped to the floor and I just played dead. And I tried to be as still as I could be. My throat had been cut all the way around. He had basically tried to decapitate me.

I could hear his footsteps as he walked out of the bathroom and around the corner. I thought that he was a ways away, maybe in the living room. And I jumped up, and I took off, and I was slipping in blood all over everywhere. I ran for the back door. I thought, if I can just get to the back door, I'm just going to hit it. I'm just going to hit it, and I'm just going to run. And right as I got to the back door

and went to grab, and I just thought, it's all fixing to be over, here he come right behind me. He grabbed me from behind, and he turned me around, and he put his hands inside my throat that had been cut, and he squeezed as hard as he could. I knew that I was in bad shape because I was laying in a puddle of blood. I knew that I was dying. I knew that there was a chance I probably wouldn't make it. And I also knew that if I didn't make it,

then my daughter wasn't going to have anybody. So I knew that I had to use everything I had in me to stay alive for her. Emily crawled into her mother's bedroom and picked up the phone. I was able to push the buttons, 911. I couldn't talk. I heard the operator say, ma'am, please don't hang up, don't hang up. I crawled to my mom's side of the bed, which was actually further away, because I felt like laying on her side of the bed.

I wasn't alone because she was there with me. And I knew that if I called 911 that I couldn't talk to them, but they would have to come. Not realizing anything was wrong, Emily's friend grew impatient. I heard a horn keep honking, and it was my friend in my SUV. I thought in my head, please stop, please stop, please come in. I wanted her to come to me just so I could have somebody to hold on to. But she didn't. And then I heard voices.

And a volunteer firefighter come in, and the first thing he did was he grabbed me. And the blanket that I was laying on, they picked up the blanket. And then my head fell back and that's when they noticed that my throat had been cut. There were voices everywhere. I know people were asking questions, but I couldn't talk.

I just, I hurt. And I heard one of the nurses say that she's not going to make it. At the hospital, Emily had surgery to repair her cut throat and 27 stab wounds. I had my throat cut all the way around and all the way around the back. I had numerous stab wounds all over my body, all over my legs, all over my sides. And it took a total of 400 and something stitches and a lot of staples. Emily identified her assailant and he was arrested within hours of the attack. The next time Emily saw Matthew Salazar was at his trial. He didn't look at me, but just seeing that face was a face of horror to me. Matthew was charged with attempted capital murder, and he received 99 years.

I survived because I'm a fighter, and I had to fight to live for my little girl. Pluto TV is a place for movie fans like me. And TV fans like me. They've got something for everyone, and it's free. I love free, and I love Jersey Shore. For me, it's the Godfather. SpongeBob SquarePants, I am Patrick.

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