ng] I have to get him off of me. I have to stop this. I cannot be raped. And I cannot be killed. I've never felt
pain like that before. Each time I cut
through the nerve, it was almost like I
was going to pass out. He was in a rage
at that point. His face was very intent. He wanted to kill me. Once I enraged him,
the fight was on. And it wasn't going to stop
until one of us had won and one of us had lost. I had moved to Houston. And right before
I had moved there, I'd gone, driven
over to Houston, and spent a weekend checking
out apartment complexes throughout the area. I really wanted a place that was
going to be as safe and secure as possible. This apartment complex
was close to downtown, had a full perimeter
fence around it, about an 8-foot tall fence. Then they also had on duty
security guards at all times. About 10 o'clock that
evening, one of my girlfriends called and said
that they were going to go to this place
called The Ale House, and would I like to come. So I met up with her and rode
over with her to The Ale House. And we had a good time. We ran into some friends
and had a nice evening. I had run into a fellow there. And he offered to give me a ride
home, which he did, and dropped me off back at my
apartment complex probably about 1 o'clock
in the morning, I went upstairs to the second
level, where my apartment was. And entered my apartment,
closed it, put the deadbolt on, washed my face, brushed
my teeth, and went to bed. I believe I was in a
very, very sound sleep. When I felt, suddenly,
as I'm coming awake, someone on top of me. Someone with their body
weight pressing down and holding my body down
and grabbing at my underwear and trying to yank them off. And I was very befuddled. I didn't know what
was happening. Who's-- what's going on? I can still remember
from that point in time, though, the feeling
of his leg hair against my legs,
that coarseness. And I reached my hands up,
and I feel this knife that's being held against my throat. And it was just the
clearest thought that went through my
brain and woke me up. Oh, I'm being raped. All I can recall
doing is screaming, no, please don't hurt me. And trying to push
away this knife and yet kicking and moving
and screaming to please stop. Please don't hurt me. As soon as I put my hand up
to his hand, I enraged him. And once I enraged
him, the fight was on. And it wasn't going to stop
until one of us had won and one of us had lost. I took a very hard
blow to my right eye. There was just this
explosion of blood that-- like a hot waterfall,
just pouring out. And I had my second rational
or clearheaded thought, and that was, he's
cut my eye out. I could feel the
blade of this knife. And I just felt, like, I
have to get him off of me. I have to stop this. I cannot be raped. And I cannot be killed. The farm is 50 acres. It is our hobby. Right now, we grow corn
here, and we hunt and fish. Beautiful morning. It was a warm, sunshiny day. I knew it was only going to
take a couple hours to pick the load of corn. The corn picker hooks to the
back of the farm tractor. And on the back of the corn
picker, you pull a trailer. And the corn picker, you pull
it down each row of corn, and it actually takes the
ear of corn off the stalk. And as that ear of corn
goes through the machine, it takes the shuck off the corn. And then the corn is
dropped into an elevator. And the elevator shoots
it back into the wagon. I'd already picked
a load of corn. Trailer was loaded. And I was headed up to the
barn to store it into the barn. I walked around to the corn
picker, cleaning it off, cleaning shucks off. Just a lot of trash and stuff
had build up on the picker. I noticed underneath of it
was a corn stalk stuck up under the bottom
of the corn picker. I could not pull it out. I mean, I tried pulling it out. Couldn't get it out. Everything is moving now. I walked back to
the corn picker, sticked my arm inside,
grabbed the stalk, and as I was pulling
on the stalk, the rollers that take the stalks
off the corn grabbed my glove. And it pulled my hand
up into the rollers. At that time, I was trapped. I thought, man,
what a big dummy, sticking my hand into this
machine rolling, operating. And I started
pulling my hand out. I couldn't get my hand out. By now, they steel
cleats on the roller had taken the back of the
glove off the back of my hand and started cutting
into my skin. The more I pulled, the
further it pulled my hand up into the rollers. My hand was up and then
my fingers was down over like this. It was almost like
it was wedged. I was really mad at
myself for doing it. I knew better. And I couldn't believe
it happened to me. Then I was thinking, my
wife's going to kill me. The cell phone that I had
no service here on the farm. So I had no cell phone. The steel rollers
just continued cutting into the back of my hand. My hand's bleeding. It's probably swollen up three
times as big as it should be. I was beginning to realize
I'm in trouble, that I've got to get this machine
stopped somehow. To turn the machine off, you
would get on back onto the farm tractor and there's
a lever there you push it straight
down to turn it off. I knew I had to jam the machine. The only way that I could
get those rollers stopped was jamming the machine. One time, I had one of
my boots in my hand. And I thought about
throwing it at the tractor, hoping to hit that lever. But I knew that would've
been a heck of a shot to hit the lever. So I took the boot and tried to
jam it down into the rollers. The rollers were so tight. And the boots were so thick. I would push the boot down,
and it would do nothing. I started throwing dirt,
just grabbing handfuls of dirt and rocks from my left
hand down into the machine. At one point, I physically
tried to pull my hand off to pull it out of the rollers.
And I couldn't do it. The more I pulled, the
further up into the rollers it would take my hand. I'm thinking, man, I'm
in big time trouble. So I started hollering. I sat there and just
hollered as loud as I could. The road's about a quarter
of a mile through the woods. And I knew-- I was hoping somebody may be
walking up the road, that would hear me and would come in. But no one-- no one heard me. Well, I was in my office. And I looked at the clock. It was exactly 11:23, I
remember, on the clock. And I had a very, very
strong compelling need to make a phone call. And basically, I had no idea
why I needed to do that. Because that was
very atypical of me. An elementary
school principal, I don't have time to just
frivolously make phone calls. And so I called. I asked to speak with my son. I told him I loved him
and told him to have a good day in kindergarten. And as I was talking
to him, I was looking at the entrance of my building. And I did notice that a man was
tugging on the right-hand door, which is permanently locked. You can't get in that door. He looked like a
grandfather to me. So in my mind I'm
thinking, well, he's a grandfather,
never been at our school. I need to go help him. Well, I left my office. And my intent was
to go find him. I went to the right after I
got out of the office area, in our lobby area. I thought that's
where he would be. When I got there,
he wasn't there. But something else told me
to turn around and look down the hallway to the
left, and so I did. And when I looked down there,
he was standing in the hallway outside of our kindergarten
classroom, just kind of peeking in the door from the hallway. And I decided to approach him. And when I did, I
obviously startled him. I don't think he anticipated
anybody was coming up behind him. I said, excuse me, sir. I said, is there someone
I can help you find? He immediately turned to me
and started kind of digging around the left side
of his stomach area and almost
instantaneously pulled out from his left pant leg what
I now know is a machete. All I could see of him
was the outline of his hair, that it seemed to be fairly
short, straight hair. The knife was
flailing everywhere. I was screaming so loudly that
I later found out approximately 20 people in 15 different
units in my apartment complex all woke up to my screams. Everyone heard my screams. Not a single one of those
people called the police. He was telling me to shut up. He was saying my name. Jennifer, shut the hell up. I was trying think who is this? He knows me. It's someone I know. And I was trying to rattle
through who it could be. I candidly felt very
confident that I was going to get him to stop. I thought with my
power of persuasion, my power of my strength,
my power of my struggle, whatever it was I
was going to use it. And I was going to
get this man to stop. I didn't think of what
the next step could be. Not until my throat was slit. My throat was cut. Then I knew. That was the first time that I
thought that I'm going to die. And I didn't want to die. And I just wanted
to get out of there. And I would have done anything
to live at that moment. And when he told me, no,
don't look at me, bitch. Even as much as
my mind wanted to, my brain, my law school
education might been telling me that I needed to gather evidence
to be able to identify him, there was no way I was going
to do anything to aggravate, irritate, upset him. I was-- I assured him. I promise I won't look at you. I won't. I won't. And I didn't. Because he made it very clear
that if I did anything other than what he wanted me
to do at that moment that he would kill me. He drags me across
the room and tells me to get in the bathroom. The bathroom didn't
have a lock on the door. So the first thing I
do when I got in there was press up my body against
the door of the bathroom. And I realized that
my body standing there is not going to hold it shut. So I slide down, put my
back up to the bathroom door and my feet up
against the bathtub. And I just push and
hold as hard as I can. At that moment, or moments,
suddenly, it's quiet. And I could hear him. I can still hear
today, the sound of him moving in my apartment,
grabbing things, moving things. And then I hear the sound
of his pants zipping up. It's the zipper going up. And I keep waiting in there. And I'm bleeding so profusely. And I know it's my throat now. I reached around and I grabbed
the toilet roll off the toilet paper holder and yanked
that off and I stick that up against my throat. And I wait. I just knew I had
to get out of there. The option was I stay in there,
cowering, scared of what's on the other side of the door. If I do that, I'm going
to bleed to death. I was bound and
determined to get loose. I knew my wife was going
to be really mad at me because I messed my hand up. The whole time I was
having to hold my hand in a certain position,
which continued bleeding. The whole time it
was still bleeding. The back of the hand
was down to the bone. I mean, just all the meat on
the back of the hand was gone. I always thought once I jammed
that machine, that I could just pull my hand right out. I wouldn't have to worry about
the rollers continued pulling my hand. Then I started taking parts off
of the back of the corn picker. The rod is about 8
to 10 inches long. It's 3/4 inch in diameter. And it holds the back
plate onto the corn picker that the corn wagon attaches to. So it's a real strong,
solid piece of metal. It probably took
10 or 15 minutes of working to get that rod off. But I knew that was
the only thing left. I couldn't-- I didn't have
anything else left to reach in order to-- to jam the machine. I said, I've got to do
something different. Jamming these rollers
is not working. I had pushed and pushed and
pushed with that big piece of metal. And it wasn't doing anything. So that's when, when
I grabbed the rod, I didn't even try to
put it in from the top. I said, I've got to
go into the side. I knew there was some gears
and a chain over there. And I knew if I could jam
it up against the tire that was on the side of
machine, that that-- that might jam the machine. So I reached, took the
rod and reached around to the left side. But I dropped the rod. And almost got my finger-- I felt the gears go over top
of the tips of my fingers. Now I had to struggle to reach
and feel around on the ground to find the rod. I found the rod
and tried it again. And this time, it worked. I jammed, I put it in a
perfect spot, jammed it up against the tire. And now the rollers
quit rolling. The whole machine was
sitting there just-- just jerking from being-- from the gears being
jammed up in it. I had my knees up
against the machine. I took my left hand and grabbed
ahold of my right forearm and pulled. I mean, I pulled. I'm a pretty good-sized guy. So I was putting a lot of
pressure on it and pulling. And it wouldn't come off. So I thought then I needed-- maybe my gloves
were hung up there. And I was thinking I
needed to cut my glove off. I knew I had my pocket knife.
I reached into my pocket. And it's about a 2 and
1/2, 3-inch long knife. And I was able to get it
open with my left hand and reached back in there
and started cutting away on the gloves. I thought there was gloves. But I was actually
cutting my fingers. Each time I would get one
loose, I would pull my hand to-- to try to pull my
hand out of there. It wasn't-- still
wasn't working. I still couldn't
get my hand loose. I was in a hurry. I knew-- I knew I
had to get loose. And it seemed like
it was just seconds. Once I cut through, I was able
to pull the nubs of my fingers up and straighten them up
to where all I had to do was put my hand down. And that's when
the fire broke out. That was our first encounter. And he started striking
me immediately. As we maneuvered backward,
I kept walking backward as he was hitting me. He didn't say a
word at this time. He just was striking me over
and over and over again. I don't know that I ever really
felt the blows of being hit. I did not register
any fear whatsoever. I was not afraid
that I can recall. I don't remember any pain. He just seemed intent
on wanting to hurt me. I scream three things. The first thing was I scream no. My mind was basically
saying to him, you know, you don't do this
in an elementary school. What are you doing? Stop. So I scream no. And then call 911, lockdown. I really felt that it-- in my
environment, it was just he and I. I did not feel like there
was anyone else around that could help me at
this moment in time. When we got just to about
the door of the office area, he stopped. And he took the machete
across my stomach area. I jumped back. And I had a key card hanging
on my neck that actually took the blow of that swipe
across my midsection. From there, he ran from me. I went in the office
area because I knew how to lockdown my school. My thinking process is, I
just have to stop this man. And several of my
teachers had cell phones. And I had directed them if we
ever needed to do something like this, to get on the
cell phone and call for help. Because there would
be a good reason. And so several teachers were
out there on their cell phones calling 911, having no idea
why they were even calling. He went directly
for the children. And he started taking his weapon
and banging it on the tables to make loud noises. And he started striking
the children directly. The teacher, once she saw
what was going on here. She did intervene. And she told him to stop
hitting the children. She put her hand up to stop
the machete from hitting her in the head and got cut
across the palm of her hand. She told the children
to run at that time. And of course, in an
elementary school, we're always telling
children not to run. So this was quite-- they weren't sure what to do. Some ran. Some clung to their teacher
because she was their security. Some hid under tables
in the classroom. Some ran out into the hallway
and ran down the hallway. Some ran out of the
front of the school. Many of them had bruises
all over their bodies, some on their heads, their backs,
their legs, their arms. The only thing I recall is their
screams over and over again. Those are things
that don't easily disappear from your head. And to this day, that--
that happens at school. When kids are screaming, it
just kind of sends chills up and down you really. All of these children in
my school, they're kids. This man was coming to hurt us. I didn't want that to happen. So my-- I think my motherly
instinct was probably taking over more than anything else. I just needed to
keep everybody safe. About that time, then,
the kindergarten teacher came into the office area. And she propped herself
up against the door and let the children, there were
several kindergarten children running in. They were screaming, and
they were running away to get away from him. He was directly behind them
with his machete raised at them. His arm went through where
the opening of the door was before we could
get it closed. And in his rage, he
pushed that open. And when he did, he came in
on me for the second time. I decided to open
the door to come out, which was a big decision to do,
because I thought maybe he's waiting quietly to surprise me. My hands, covered in blood,
and they're really slick. And I can't get a good
grip on the door handle. And I had pressed that door so
incredibly hard with my feet that I had jammed it shut. And I'm standing there jerking
and jerking and jerking, trying to get this door open. And I can't. And I had another one
of those thoughts. And it was-- I've survived the attack. But I'm going to
bleed to death in here because I can't open
the bathroom door. But fortunately, I do
open the bathroom door. I jerk it open. And I crawl out. At this point, I'm back
of my hands and knees. And I say hello
when I crawl out, thinking, why I'm
sending a greeting. But I want to know
if he's there. And there's no reply. And I start to try to
turn on the lights. The first thought
that came to my mind was did I not pay
the electric bill and they turn off electricity
tonight of all nights? But then I go and try to find-- I get my phone. And I go to my phone. And it's dead. I'm sitting on the sofa. And I-- I'm terrified that
maybe he's behind the sofa. Maybe he's in the kitchen. I can't tell. And I find my cell phone. And I down 911. He kept hanging on with me. And he became a friend, someone
I could trust on that phone. He was the only
safety that I had. Probably about 15 minutes
into this 911 call, there comes a pounding
on my front door. And I tell the
dispatcher, they're here. And he goes, I've got the
Houston fire and police on my screen and
they're not there yet. The voice on the other side of
the door was promising me help. But it was very insistent
that I open this door. I tell it-- relate
this to my dispatcher. And he says,
Jennifer, if you don't know who this is on the other
side, do not open the door. The corn shucks are really dry. So the sparks had-- had sparked a fire. And at first, it was
just a small fire. I took my left hand and started
pushing them away, and pat-- patting them down, trying
to put the fire out. And it was almost, like, all
of a sudden, just like gasoline exploded. There goes the fire.
It just spread everywhere. It was on my right side. And it was all around me. It was up inside of the machine. My arm was in a furnace. The skin on my
forearm was melting. It was-- it was just
dripping like plastic. The flames were shooting
around the machine. It-- it was burning-- burning
my hair, singing my hair. The wind was blowing toward me. All those flames is
coming toward me. And all I thought about was just
I wasn't going to die there. There's no way I
was going to die. I started thinking of
my son and my wife. I didn't want them coming
down, finding me burnt to death right there on my machine. At one point, I saw-- my-- I was kind of looking
down and saw my mom and my wife fighting over where I
was going to be buried. My mom wanted me
buried in Kentucky. And my wife wanted me buried
here in South Carolina. And it was almost, like, man,
I am not going to die here. There's no way I'm going
to let this happen. And at that point, I truly
tried to pull my hand off again with the forearm
melting, I had steel pushed up against it, and screaming as
loud as I could, and tried to pull my arm off again. I mean, that's probably
the hardest that I pulled. And I just couldn't believe my
hand wouldn't-- still would not come free. But now my arm was
really on fire. I grabbed my pocket
knife and that's when I jammed jammed a
knife into my forearm and started cutting-- started
cutting the meat away. He was in a rage
at that point. You could see it in his face. His face was very intent. He wanted to kill me. I needed to defend my head. All I had was my bare hands. So I put my hands in
a crisscross position. In his strikes, what he was
doing instead of getting my head, is he was hitting
my arm, my left arm and my left hand. I'm not sure why, but he-- he turned away from me
at this moment in time. I yelled help me get him down. And I jumped on his back. I did see his face was
right here at my face. And it was definitely enraged. I heard a clink. And that sound said to
me, he dropped his weapon. My need was to find
what he had dropped. My thinking was that I needed
to find it, I needed to get it, and I needed to get
it away from him. This person on the
other side of the door continues to knock and to pound. He says-- he keeps
saying his name. He said, I'll-- open-- I'll show you my-- my badge. Just open the door
and let me in. And I'm-- I'm pretty hysterical. I'm saying, please. I gotta get out of here. I gotta get help. And he said, I just
want you to wait. You're going to be OK.
You just wait. Time moved very slowly
for me during that period. And I couldn't
stop the bleeding. I had had my face slashed
from this above my eyebrow, across the bridge of my nose. And it crossed over the
corner here of my eye. And then a very deep slice,
starting here on my cheek and going down to-- and just nicking
the jugular vein. I'd also been stabbed through
the throat as well as two deep stab wounds through my arm. And I knew that I had to
get word to my mother. I needed my mother. Because I felt-- did I
do something to deserve-- that brought this on? But I also knew that this
was going to break her heart, especially if I died. Once I jammed that knife
into my arm, the nerves-- it was-- it was almost,
like, breathtaking. Each time I cut
through the nerve, it was almost like I
was going to pass out. I was screaming. Each time I would
cut through one. I would scream as
loud as I could. I mean, that was pain. I mean, let me tell you. That was the worst pain I've
ever felt. To break the bone, I had to raise up
as high as I could, and then I dropped to the
ground with all my weight. And I knew I had-- I only had seconds. Because the fire was
continuing getting bigger. I was going so quick. I was in hopper mode. Once it burned close enough to
the air pressure-- started-- the tire just exploded. It exploded. And it was such a big
explosion, at the same time I broke the bone
in my right arm, it was able to push
me out of the fire, out of the flames
about five feet. So I jumped up, and
thinking I'm free. I'm free. Finally, I'm free. And now I gotta get help. So I run around to the
front of the tractor. And putting the fire
out on my pants. My right leg was on fire. Every time my heart
would beat, it would be a big, long stream of
blood shooting out of my arm. While I was running to my truck,
I had to take my left hand and putting the flames
out on my pants. I jumped into my
truck, continued on up to the main road, which is
about a quarter of a mile from-- from the tractor. Got up to the road, and I
stopped and let the cars go by. And as the cars went by,
I was waving at them, blowing the horn,
waving my arm at them. And there was blood shooting all
over the windshield and all-- all over the dashboard. So people were going
by and not stopping. I pulled my truck out into
the middle of the road. And thought to
myself, I mean it-- if I die, I'm going
to die right here. Somebody is going to-- somebody's either going
to hit me or help me. There's suddenly lots of
voices outside the door. You know, saying-- and
identifying themselves as Houston Fire and Police. And my dispatcher
confirms with me that it is, in
fact, they're there. And I can go. And I open the door. And I collapse pretty much out
on the floor in the hallway. And the first thing that I
hear, well, all this going on, is that they have a security
guard injured as well. And I started crying. Someone else has
been hurt from this. When the police came
into my apartment, after they'd already
taken me away, they had found some belongings. They had found in
the apartment a pair of underwear, a Pinkerton
security guard hat, a belt, and a glove. And they also found a knife. The first thing they
do apparently is ask-- they need-- they want
to take his boots. He had, like, cowboy boots on. And they pulled off his boots. And he had white socks on that
were splattered with blood. And then they take his shirt,
and he has blood on his torso. And they took off his pants,
and he has no underwear on. The on duty security guard
from my apartment complex had committed this attack. I do believe that had
I opened that door, he would have killed me. Several cars went by. And nobody would stop. So at this point, I knew
I couldn't go any further. I had to get help. Somebody had to help me there. I was losing a lot of blood. One of the people who had
drove around me the first time had went up about a quarter of
a mile to the top of the hill and turned around. And he came back. When he arrived, I was sitting
in the middle of the road. He said, hey, man. You OK? I said, no. I raised my arm up. And it was squirting blood. And I said, no. I think I need a little help. And Doug jumps back
and says, oh, shit. And then all of a
sudden, his face-- just-- just like blood red. And then he started sweating. At that point, he jumps back
and says, man, don't move. He runs to his truck and
gets his paramedic bag and starts packing these
bandages on my arm, stopping the bleeding. He was talking to the 911
lady to get an ambulance. And he said, hey, we need
a chopper in here, too. This guy's in serious condition. He's starting to turn gray. We may lose him here. I had-- of course,
my arm, cut off two inches above the
elbow, third degree burns underneath my arm here. All-- all the way
back to my shoulder. I had third degree burns on
my left hand and fingers. And I had fourth degree
burns on my right leg, right above my knee here. And that was all way-- all
the way down to the bone. We had six surgeries, all total. Everything was skin grafted
back and healing, healing good. When I first saw my wife after-- after the tube was
taken out of my throat, it was after-- actually after
a surgery, and I woke up. I was-- I was on a
lot of painkillers. I was in a lot of pain. But she was holding my
hand and kept telling me everything was going to be OK. And she stayed there for 3
and 1/2 weeks by my side. I have a vision of my attacker. He had moved from where we
were at the nurses desk. About three steps back, there
was a chair sitting right outside the health
room bathroom. He did not try to run. He did not move from that chair. Really, the life in him
disappeared the moment I jumped on his back. I did feel the energy in him
drain totally to the floor. It was the most amazing feeling. I had never felt that before
and never felt that since. I talked to him at this point. I said, relax. Calm down. It's over. When I looked down, we
were basically laying in a large puddle of blood. I saw my injuries. I saw my finger my small
finger on my left hand was laying pretty much
detached from my hand. It was only held by a small flap
of skin between my small finger and my ring finger. So I knew that
that was amputated. I knew that the machete had
lodged itself in to about halfway into my left hand. I had a very deep cut
to my forearm here. I think I was in a state,
somewhat of in and out of shock at this point in time. I had slid down the wall and
was sitting on the floor then. In front of me were
approximately five kindergarten children. And they were sitting
there holding hands, just sitting on the floor
looking at me as I'm laying in front of them. All I kept saying is,
he's still out there. He's still out there. We had 23 children
who were chased around their kindergarten
classroom, five and six-year-old
children who were chased by a man with a very big knife. I could not at first
fathom how they were going to get through this. When I was on the stretcher
and they were just ready to wheel me
out of the school, I remember a very
strong sense of peace. I remember thinking
we are going to be OK. We are going to
get through this. And we're going to do
it together somehow. In the end, my wife, she--
she never got mad at me. She was truly the person
who helped me through it. I mean, she-- she was
truly very positive. And she told me-- just-- just everything
was going to be OK. The whole time, she was
very, very positive. I survived because I
didn't want to die. I had too much to live for. I have a great family,
very positive family. I have a great farm
here and a great job. And I didn't want to die. I truly didn't want to die. To get back to my school was one
of the hardest things I've ever done in life. I lost 50% of my blood
at my school that day. Once I got in there, there's
no place I'd rather be. I want to stay there
as long as I can. I need to be there for the
children, for the adults there. I love my job. I survived also because of
the maternal instinct that-- that a mother has for children. Whether they would have been
my children or other people's children, you know,
mothers have that instinct to be able to protect them. The police and the detectives,
they all came into the hospital into the emergency
room, and post-surgery. And they were, like, girl,
you put up a hell of a fight. I mean, there was, like,
blood on the ceiling. There was on the walls. I mean, it was flying. Bedclothes were everywhere. And I did. I-- I fought with
everything in me. Because despite the fact
having been slashed and stabbed and cut, he did not
succeed in raping me. Having instinct, intuition, and
a big heart, he saved my life. And for that, he
will always be one of the most important people
that's ever impacted my life. And I was lucky enough
that when I got married, he came to my wedding.
