Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Remember Telling God this is a 911 Prayer

Episode Date: June 20, 2026

Rhonda is abducted, sexually assaulted and stabbed and yet, incredibly, outwits her attacker. Patrick is at a family gathering when his brother in law goes on a shooting rampage. Jason tries to save a neighboring family from a tornado by sheltering them in his house before it is sucked up 50 feet into the funnel cloud.Apartments.com - To find whatever you’re searching for and more visit apartments.com the place to find a place.Omaha Steaks: Go to OmahaSteaks.com and use promo code SURVIVED at checkout for $35 off. Minimum purchase may apply.Progressive - Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.Talkiatry - Head to Talkiatry.com/ISURVIVED to get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode contains stories involving violence against children. Listener discretion is advised. I'm punching, I'm kicking, I'm scratching, I'm biting, I'm pulling his hair. Real people. I immediately saw a black wall of, you know, impending doom just coming right at me. Who faced death. It was me and dead people and no one's going to come there to save me. And live to tell how.

And I was thinking to myself, I can't. breathe. I can't breathe. I'm going to die. This is I survived. It's May 1988 in Pensacola, Florida. 18-year-old Rhonda has just completed her freshman year of college. She's working as a cocktail waitress in a five-star restaurant. It was a great time for me. I was experiencing life away from home at the beach. I love the beach. And it was just one of the best, most peaceful, exciting times of my life. That particular day, it was two days before my 19th birthday. It was about 1 o'clock in the morning, somewhere around that time. And I remember my manager asking me,

you want me to walk you out to your car. And, you know, I was 18 years old. I felt invincible. I said, oh, no, that's okay. I'll just walk myself out to the car. So I'm walking to my car. And this guy who's in a Jeep that's uncovered just jumps out out of the blue. He was like, hey, hey, can you give me a ride?

My Jeep won't start. I can't make it home. And, you know, at 18, I was full of spunk, and I kind of smarted off. I'm not giving you a ride. I don't know you. I'm not giving you a ride. In my mind, I was thinking all I had to do was tell him no, get my car and go home.

That'd be the end of it. It wasn't. As I stick my key in my car, I felt him come up and stick something to my side, and I glanced down and realize he's a knife. Immediately, I realized I'm in danger. He says, you're going to give me a ride. And so all I can remember is I just kind of froze, and I panicked, and I did know what to do. The next minute, he's pushing me over into the seat.

I'm crawling over into the seat, and he gets into the driver's side, and he starts it up. It's obvious that he doesn't know how to drive a five-speed because he starts to take off and we're jerking. I asked him, I said, what are you doing? Where are you going? He said, I'm just going home. I'll drop you off. The minute I get home, I'm just going home. My mind is half blank.

and then it's racing too. And I'm thinking, what do I do? How do I get out of this? We come to the first red light, and I think, okay, here's my chance to get away. I immediately open my door and try to get out. And as I'm getting out, he grabs me by the hair and just yanks me back in the car.

Shut the door, shut the door. And for some reason I did, I shut the door and I obeyed. That moment, I think, is when I realized I was in danger. It wasn't just the car that he wanted. he wanted me. I realized at that point, he doesn't just want a ride home. He wants me in the car,

not just the car. Rape was the first thing that came to my mind. I think I kind of went into survival mode. I thought, no way, I'm going to be raped and he's going to get away with it.

I'm going to remember everything I can remember to tell the police. Then he pulls up, he goes down this little dirt road, and I'm thinking, oh boy, this is this is not good it's secluded

it's dark I knew that I was going to be raped I was trying to figure out how I'm going to get away what do I need to do to protect myself and I'm thinking about all the times that I had fights

with my brother when we were younger and how he told me how to defend myself and I'm thinking if he touches me I'm taking a cigarette and I'm putting it out in his eye and then I'm going to take my bottom of my hand and I'm going to push his nose up back up into his brain. As he pulls into the dirt road, I do light a cigarette. He says, oh, I live behind the woods over here.

I'm just going to park right here so you don't know where I live and you can have your car back. My gut tells me different. I know that is not going to happen. I get out of the car to go around to the driver's side and he just runs up behind me and it feels like he's punched me in the back. And I remember just the air being knocked out of me for a minute And when I turn around He just starts hitting me over and over and over again in the face One hit after the other

Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam Part of me just said, this is it, you gotta fight, you don't have any choice You gotta fight And so I take the cigarette and I try to poke it right in his eye But I miss and I was pushing and hitting him back And scratching him back and all that did was just make him mad, made him more mad. At that point, he stabbed me in the lung, and my lung collapsed,

and I was just like, and I couldn't breathe. And I did the only thing I knew to do, which was to pray. He stabbed me and punctured me in the lung. He stabbed me right in the side, and immediately all my breath went out of me, boom. That is when he cut my under, and when he cut my underwear, I knew he was about to rape me. So I started fighting back as much as I could.

I'm punching, I'm kicking, I'm scratching, I'm biting, I'm pulling his hair, I'm fighting with absolutely everything I have in me. I'm fighting back. He got behind me and he choked me in a chokehold, and he kept choking me and choking me, and I could not. could not breathe.

I couldn't, I couldn't suck in one bit of air. That is the scariest thing that you can ever experience. To have minutes tick by where you can't breathe and you're trying to gasp in air. And I'm grabbing onto his arm, trying to pull his arm down, and I couldn't, because he just had a death grip on there. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm going to die. I started seeing these little spots in front of my eyes, little white spots.

And I was thinking to myself, I'm going to die. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I'm going to die. And I passed out. When I came to, the fighting started again. He did put me down on the ground, and he had the knife, and he held it to my throat. He raped me.

I still have scars on my throat from a heart. where he was holding a knife to my throat as he was raping me. The rape wasn't the biggest part of that night. The biggest part of that night was he was trying to kill me. The rape was actually a relief because he was preoccupied, and I had time to think and plan, how am I going to get out of this alive? When he finished raping me, and I thought, okay, this is it.

He raped me. He got what he wanted, and now he can just leave me alone and go away. I had to crawl a little bit to get back to the car because all my strength was gone. And he came up behind me and he just pulled my hair again and flipped me over and started hitting me again. And he just started stabbing me over and over again in the chest.

Boom! Boom! He'd put me in the choke hole just like he did before. I think he wanted to finish me off. I thought to myself, Not again. I can't breathe. Not again. I can't breathe. Same exact thing happened. Spots went in front of my eyes.

And I remember praying. I'm too young to die. Please don't let me die. Please help me. And I lost consciousness again. Somehow I came to again. And I think at that point he thought I was dead. Because he walked off.

So I start crawling, trying to crawl away where he couldn't see me. And I guess he must have heard the noise. And he comes running over there. Then he takes the knife, and he just starts stabbing me. My adrenaline was pumping so hard that I couldn't feel the stab wounds. I wasn't feeling the pain.

But I was experiencing the fear. And he was just saying, you stupid bitch, you stupid bitch. I thought to myself, this only way I'm going to survive this is just to play dead. And he took the knife and he sliced my nipple. And then he tried to slice the other one. I just lay there and pretending like I was dead. And then I heard him crank up the car.

And I just felt in my spirit that he was going to run over me with the car. That was how he was going to finish me off was he was going to run over me. I'm laying there and I'm thinking, I do not have the strength to roll over and get away. But all of a sudden, I did roll over into the ditch, and I think at that point he realized I was still alive. I'm sure he was thinking, why isn't this girl dead yet? He pulled me by the hair, beat me again, choked me again, and again, I just pretended like I was dead.

Just pretend like you're dead. Don't move a muscle. He will leave. You can crawl out of these woods. He checked to see if I was still alive. He put his finger under my nose and I didn't breathe. I didn't move. And then he checked my pulse.

I imagined it was very weak because I had lost so much blood. And he grabbed me by the hair and drugged me by the head of my hair all the way to the car. And he picked me up, sort of, and pushed me in the back seat. And he cranked up the car and he took off. I put my hand up to my lung because I'm starting to feel more than just a little bit of I'm starting to feel a little bit of pain, and I grab what feels like a clump of jelly. I remember thinking, I'm dying.

I am dying in the back seat of this car. God, I'm only 18, 19 in two days. I don't want to die this young. I remember telling God, this is a 911 prayer. All of a sudden, I start thinking, I need to look for streetlights. There's going to be people around. I'm going to be able to get help.

And it just comes to me. Pretend like you have amnesia. Make him think that I do not remember what happened. That I cannot testify against him if it came down to it. I know that somehow he needs to be the hero in all of this. When Rhonda saw streetlights, she put her plan into action. I sat up, and I think I startled the mess out of him when I sat up, and I said, oh my goodness, what happened to me?

Oh, my goodness, was I in a car accident or what? Are you taking me to the hospital? Are you going to save my life? Oh, thank you so much. I knew I had to feed him all of the answers. I knew would make him think he wasn't going to get into trouble. And it worked. And he was like, yeah, you had a car accident.

and I'm going to take you to the hospital. Rhonda asked her rescuer to take her to the store first. And I said, oh, my throat hurts. Can you stop and get me some water before we get to the hospital? He was like, okay, calm down, calm down. I'll take you to the store. I'll get you something to drink. And I'm like, I'm bleeding.

Nobody can see me like this. And I wanted him to know that I was not going to try to get out of the car and run away because I had blood all over me. And I said to him, can you pull over to the side of the store so no one can see me and can you run in there and get me something to drink? It got out of the car

and I saw him go to the side of the building and zip his pants and pee in a cup. I knew he was in a vulnerable position. I figured that was the... He was off guard and that was a good chance. Then I just opened the back door of the car and I took off running in the store with everything I had.

I don't know how I ran and had the energy to run after what all had happened. Rhonda made it inside the store, and the clerk locked the door before calling 911. I collapsed, and my adrenaline stopped pumping, and I felt every single bit of pain at that point, from my throat to my chest, to my nipples, to my back, to every place he had punched me. It's like it all came 100. 100% never had I felt so much pain. But I knew I was safe. It seemed like forever before the ambulance got there.

Because I remember laying on the floor thinking, come on, please God, I'm going to die. Rhonda was taken to the hospital and treated for her serious injuries. Her abductor was arrested that same night. I found out that he was only 16 years old, only 16 years old and did all of that. I don't know that I've ever gotten over that. Timothy Jordan was sentenced to 40 years for kidnapping,

rape, armed robbery, and grand theft auto. I survived because I don't think God was finished with me yet, because I earnestly prayed and asked him to save my life, and he did. And I promised him that I would take that life and use it. And I have. I changed my major in college. at the time and I went into counseling. One of the first jobs that I had was working at the Children's Advocacy Center

interviewing children who had been sexually abused. And at that time I started realizing that's kind of where the sexual dysfunction happens when someone's been sexually abused as a child. And that behavior pattern sets up them to sometimes become offenders. I feel that if you can reach them, When they're still young, when they're juveniles, you can prevent something like this from happening. 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.

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That is so fetch. On Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. It's November 2009 in Jupiter, Florida. Patrick is a defense attorney, married to Lisa, a realtor. We laughed a lot. We just had a good time, and there was such good chemistry between us. We found out in about September, October of 2009, that Lisa was pregnant. And for us, that was just everything.

We were just so overjoyed. We couldn't wait to tell our parents. Lisa had a twin sister named Carla, and they were two peas in a pie. They were inseparable. They were just everything to each other. They also had an older brother, and he was estranged from the family. Over the course of four years, I'd only met the guy four times. He didn't make appearances at family gatherings.

He didn't even come over to his immediate family very much. The extended family didn't really want him there. The brother was a potential troublemaker with the family, and he harbored some bitter feelings towards his sisters. Lisa's brother had a history of irrational and threatening behavior towards family members. Lisa and Carla had both told me stories about how he would beat them up. I mean, his little sisters. Elise's parents, they'd always hoped that he would get better

over time. On Thanksgiving, Lisa and Patrick attended a large family gathering. We're at Thanksgiving dinner at her cousin's house. You can smell the turkey and you can smell the spices in the air and everyone's laughing and smiling and just having a really good time. All of a sudden, the phone rings and Lisa's father starts talking to somebody and giving directions. And we realized it was her brother.

I remember looking at Lisa. She was across the room and I mouthed to her, Your brother's coming? Elisa's parents actually invited him up to Thanksgiving in Jupiter without telling anybody. People were a little bit uneasy, but they thought maybe, you know, he's going to come up and everything's going to be fine. When he comes in the door, I think it was a little overwhelming for him because the whole family greeted him with love. Some of these people hadn't seen him in 10 years. For the first time ever, he gets introduced to his six-year-old cousin Michaela.

And she looks up at him and she gives him a big smile and he kind of says hi to her, a little uneasy. At that point, we decided that it was time for us to have dessert. After dinner, Michaela went to bed and the guests got ready to leave. While Lisa said her goodbyes in the living room, Carla helped Patrick wrap leftovers in the kitchen. Leave, I noticed the brothers is in the kitchen standing by himself. I went to Lisa's brother and I said, hey, we're getting ready to leave. And as I shook his hand, he pulled me and he said, why don't you stay a little longer? And I said, oh, no, no, we're tired.

We're going to go home. After shaking his hand, I turned towards Carla to get the food she was carrying. It was a couple trays of food. And the next thing I know is bang, bang, bang. I felt like I got punched in the stomach. I didn't know what was going on. I hardly even knew that I had been shot in the stomach. Lisa was behind us about five or ten feet

saying goodbyes to people I was holding the food Carla goes down on one knee and I didn't know what was going on but I just felt something just awful and my ears were ringing and I felt like I had been punched in the stomach when I looked down I see Carla

had gone down to one knee and I look up and I saw Lisa's brother standing there and he had a gun and he was pointing it right at my head I could see the smoke still coming out of the gun as he's pointing it right at my face and I took the food I had been holding, and I just threw it up in the air at him. And he shot again, and it missed.

And I grabbed Carla, and we dove out of the kitchen into the dining room. And the brother stepped in the kitchen. Bang, bang, bang. He's still shooting into the kitchen area in the family room where the other 14, 15 members of the family still were. And I said, he's got a gun. Call 911. He's got a gun.

He turned around, and he stepped right over me and pointed the gun down to my face. Here I am in the ground, the gun's four feet away from my face, and I don't want to give him an easy target, so I start moving my head back and forth, and he shoots one, bang, goes through the collar of my shirt, and bang goes through the other side. There's a bullet hole right through the collar. So he was probably this far away from ending my life with a bullet to the head. He then turns away from me and goes back into the kitchen and keeps shooting at everybody in the other room.

I was afraid he might try to shoot me again, so I crawled all the way to the way. across the dining room floor into the living room. I left a trail of blood all behind me. And I get into the living room. I can still hear bang, bang, bang, and the screaming and the wailing and people running out of the house and slamming doors to get away from him.

I could hear him in the other room saying, I've waited 20 years to do this. Patrick had no idea where his pregnant wife, Lisa, was. His sister-in-law, Carla, late injured in the kitchen doorway. Her brother hops over Carla as he comes out of the kitchen, and he starts running down the hallway towards me in the living room. And I was so afraid of what he might do that I just lay perfectly still,

hoping he would just run by me. And he didn't shoot me. He just ran by me. And I see him enter the room of the six-year-old girl, Michaela, who had gone to bed earlier that evening. And I thought, oh, no. There she is. She's a sitting duck.

And he went in there, bang. He comes partway out of her room, pauses, goes back in, and shoots her a second time to make sure she's dead. Then I see him run out the door, and that was it. As I laid there on the floor then in the living room, my head was still ringing, but it was starting to clear up. The screaming ended. Carla, who was only 20 feet away from me, stopped moaning.

She had passed. No noises from the little girl's room, no noises from the other room. And I realized I was all alone. I looked down in my stomach, and I could see the blood coming out like a strainer and pouring on the floor. This house has become a tomb of me and dead people, and there's no one here to save me.

So as the ringing really started to clear up, the silence got even louder. And I just sat there, and I thought, I'm gonna die. It was surreal. I felt like I was watching it in third person. It was me and dead people, and no one's gonna come there to save me. The silence was so thick and heavy in the room. And I just sat there, and I thought,

There is no way I can survive who was in this much blood. But then I heard thundering footsteps, just thundering footsteps coming into the house. And I heard from one room fatal, another room fatal, another room fatal. And then I hear, I got one that's alive. And all the thundering footsteps come over to me. And they said, hang in there, buddy. Patrick was rushed to the hospital and placed in an induced coma. The gunshot had ruptured his stomach and intestines, causing life-threatening

complications. I had pneumonia. I had pancreatitis. One of my kidneys was removed and the other one stopped working for an entire month. I had so many infections in my body because you've got to imagine if you're shot in the stomach after eating a big Thanksgiving dinner, the food's going to spill out to all these nooks and crannies of your body. And they told my parents, if he does survive, we expect him to either be a vegetable or severely brain damaged. After three months, Patrick's condition improved enough for him to be woken from his co-womened. My parents would come in to visit. My brother and his wife would come in to visit, but no, Lisa. I assumed that Lisa hadn't come because she must be five or six months pregnant and probably

can't be around the germs in the ICU. After he had been awake a few days, Patrick's parents asked a priest to pray with him. On the middle of prayer, he says, and Lord, please let her watch over him. Let her be his guardian angel. And my eyes popped open and I looked at my mother and I could see her eyes welled up with tears. And I just knew. And I looked at her in my mouth, who? Lisa? And she just lost it. My body started to move and wretch and heave. And I opened my mouth to wail, but no sound came out. That moment, it was the lowest point in my life. Lisa, her unborn child, her sister Carla, her cousin Michaela and her aunt Raymond were all.

killed. Lisa's brother, Paul Marriage, was arrested at a Florida Keys resort after a five-week manhunt. He was convicted of first-degree murder and received seven life sentences. Patrick now gives lectures on living with trauma. I survived because of the positive attitude that I have always had in life. I mean, I've always kind of seen the glasses half full. And once tragedy struck, I was able to continue to use this kind of positive energy. And I think that's really what did it. I've definitely had stretches where I knew something felt off mentally and therapy helped, but it didn't always feel like the full picture. Sometimes you want a clearer answer or to understand what's actually going on and what your options are. That's where talk gyatry comes in.

It's a fully online psychiatry practice, not just talk therapy. So you're meeting with licensed medical providers who can diagnose, and if appropriate, prescribe medication for things like anxiety, depression, ADHD, and more. What stands out to me is how straightforward it is. You do a quick assessment, get matched with a clinician who fits your needs, and you can book your first visit in just a few days. And you keep seeing the same provider, so you're building real continuity, not starting over every time. They also accept most major insurance, which makes it a lot more accessible than you might expect. More than 300,000 patients have already found high-quality psychiatric care through tachiatry. If you've been feeling like you need more than just

talk therapy, it might be time to try tachiatry. Head to tachiatry.com slash I survived to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's tukyatry.com slash I survived to get matched in minutes. I used to treat good protein like fish or steak as an occasion thing. If I was cooking, on a random weeknight, I'd just grab whatever looked decent at the store and hope for the best. And you could taste it. It was fine, but never great. Trying Omaha steaks really changed that for me. Now I keep my freezer stocked and it's just as easy to make something high quality on a Tuesday as it is on a special occasion. I made their top sirloin filets recently, quick pan sear finished

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It was a fairly small town. It was just a couple hundred people, and I lived about a mile outside of the town. There was a trailer park directly across the road. Had about seven or eight trailers, just a small little neighborhood. We had already heard the day before March 1st that there was going to be really bad weather coming into the area. It was all over the news. So I was a home just glued in front of the TV for several hours. Jason's girlfriend was at work, teaching at a nearby school.

Around 2 p.m., Jason heard. reports of a tornado touching down 25 miles away. Normally they move west to east and it was quite a bit south of me. So I really wasn't too worried. I got up and walked outside. And even before I stepped out onto the porch, I saw a black wall of debris and wind. I've never seen a tornado before, but I knew it was a tornado. As soon as I saw it, I just instinctively I yelled out tornado.

The first thing that I heard was a scream. Jason's neighbors, Joe, Mariah, and their three small children were in their trailer home. I looked to my left and Mariah was screaming and holding the baby. I started thinking, they're in a trailer. I'm in a bigger mobile home. And I was just like, get out of your trailer, get out. You know, get into my house. Get into my house.

And Joe, her boyfriend, stuck his head out of the door, you know. He saw it. I said, Joe, it's a tornado. It's right on top of us. Let's let's go. Mariah ran to Jason's house with the baby. Joe turned, went back in, grabbed the two children, and he was holding both of them in his arms,

and I grabbed Baby Angel, and we just both turned at that point and headed straight back towards my house. I did turn to look. All I can remember seeing was hearing the roar of it and seeing this big black cloud. We knew it was close enough to know that we were in trouble.

Jason hurried everyone into his house. I said, get in the hallway and get down on the ground. Get down. Get down on your stomachs. I heard metal banging off the buildings. I heard it hitting the house. I don't remember being afraid. I love tornadoes.

I love storms. I walk out in them. I'll be the last man in the house. So I told them I'm going to go. I don't think I told them I'm going to take a picture. But I'm turning the camera on on my phone as I walk to the When I pulled the front door open, I just remember a gust of wind hit me, and I saw it. It was like eating the end of my garage.

Joe, I knew him quite well. He was 21. Mariah, also 21, and they had three babies. The youngest one was Kendall, a baby girl about two months old. Angel was 15 months old, and Jaden was not even three years old yet. Joe seemed fairly calm. And the children were fairly calm. were fairly calm. I believe Angel was crying a little bit. Mariah was terrified this whole time.

She was more aware of the danger, I think. With the neighbors in his hallway, Jason went to take a picture of the tornado on his phone. When I opened the front door, the first thing that I saw was this black wall outside. It felt this fear shoot through me that it really was going to run right over us. I said, get down now. It's right outside. didn't have time to take a picture. I just remember turning around, slamming the door, diving on top of everybody else. We just put my arms over the top of everybody, and I started praying. And before I got more than seven or eight words out of my mouth, it hit the house. It shook the house so hard that, you know, you could hear everything. It was just like this

thing's going to fall apart. I heard a boom, a loud boom, and the windows were blowing out of the house. Immediately following, I felt the floor come up underneath of me. And just that quick, the house just started to lift. The house was several feet, probably five, ten feet in the air, spinning when we blacked out. When I came to, I realized that I was a long ways off the ground. I remember looking down and seeing the ground, seeing the funnel shape of the actual tornado.

I remember looking down, and my thought was, I'm 50 feet off the ground. How am I going to get down? I was on the inside of this thing spinning around in circles. I saw debris laying behind me. I was in this little hollow space smack dab in the middle of a tornado, right in the funnel of it, laying on the inside of the wind wall. I was awake for maybe two or three seconds at the most, and then I just blacked right back out. The next thing I recall was waking up, face down in the mud, picking up my head, and

And not knowing where I'm at, not knowing who I was, just blank, just completely blank. It had just poured. It was still raining. It was cold. I was shivering. And there was a shooting pain in my back and in my side. I tried to stand up. And I couldn't stand up.

A police officer found Jason lying in the mud. He helps me up a little bit and I finally get up. And he walks me into the sawmill. You know, I can hardly walk. I'm kind of limping in there, and he sits me down on a five-gallon bucket. And I sat there like a dead man. I didn't know my name. The pain was so extreme that, and I was in so much shock at that point.

I couldn't remember anything. I remember trying to focus on my name. What is my name? After a few minutes, you know, I was like, my name's Jason, and it just started flooding back to me. and the same instant that I realized my name, and I realized the neighbors, I brought the neighbors into my house. You got to find the neighbors. We got to find them, and people just scattered and went to look for him.

Jason was rushed to the hospital where he was told his arm was broken in seven places. He had five broken ribs, a broken collarbone, and a broken back. The first thing that came to me was that I was alive. Wow, you know, I'm alive. I know, what is the purpose of this? And then I started to ask, you know, what happened to this family? Joe and Mariah, are they okay?

The babies, are they okay? And I never got clear answers. The doctors had told them, do not tell him. It was Sunday afternoon, two days later before they told me, Angel was alive in intensive care at the hospital right next to me. Joe, Mariah, and the other children, you know, had, hadn't made it. But two hours after I found out, I was watching the news, and I heard this lady say my name.

And she said, if you're watching this, we're sorry to tell you that Angel was just taken off life support. I understand that they wouldn't have been safe in their trailer, and I understand that it's not my fault what happened. But there's something about the fact that I took the responsibility to bring them into my house. I almost drugged them into my house

and the fact that they died in my house. I felt this sense of responsibility and of guilt. Joe, Mariah, and their children were found 150 yards from where Jason's house had been. Both homes were completely destroyed by the tornado. What I feel inside and the hurt that I felt that day from that family was way more difficult than any physical damage that was done to me and it was harder to move past and it still is. I survived because of an absolute miracle.

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