I Was Waiting To Die and It Was Taking Forever

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in my throat and was basically trying to rip my larynx out. Real people. I knew the clock was ticking on getting an infection that would go throughout my body and ultimately kill me. who faced death. I was more or less waiting to die, and it seemed like it was taking forever. And lived to tell how. At that point, I made up my mind, I was going to fight. I was coming out of there.

I was going to get my son out of that house. This is I Survived. It's September 1995 in Laurel, Delaware. Kay lives with her son in a mobile home park. My son and I lived alone. I was a single parent. He was 12. I was a full-time insurance agent. I worked a couple of side jobs. It's a small community. Everybody knew everybody. I came home from work and I helped my son with his homework while I was cooking dinner. I put Nick to bed around 9, 9.30. Kay went to bed about two hours later.

Nick woke up and came out and said that there was a man trying to get in his window. And, of course, I reassured him that nobody was trying to get in. There's always people on the streets, so I wasn't concerned. I told Nick that if he would feel safer, he could come in and sleep with me. So we went to bed and I cuddled him up and we went to sleep.

About an hour later, I heard somebody knocking on the door. So I got up and I went to the door to see who was there. I stood up on my tiptoes and I looked out the window and I saw a man standing there. He was kind of kicking at the ground. They say people have an instinct, and I had, sometimes I feel an instinct, but nothing like I did that night. When I looked out the window, it was just like looking at the devil. I mean, I could...

You could just feel the evil through the door. He said his name was Jeff Wilson. He said that he had broke down and he needed to use my phone. So I said, well, I'm not going to let you in. If you want, I can make a phone call for you. So he asked me to do that and he gave me a telephone number to call. I dialed the number and the man said that he didn't know a Jeff Wilson. So I went back to the door and told him what...

He had told me that he didn't know Jeff Wilson. He cursed and kind of kicked at the ground and started to walk away. When I saw him walking away, I was still a little frightened. I was afraid he would come back to the door, so I watched him. And I watched until he crossed the street and was out of sight. And I went to the phone and I called the Delaware State Police. And I thought maybe he was drunk. Kay went back to bed where her son was still sleeping.

I was awakened again. I heard the front door slam, and it slammed really loud. And I thought, It was my boyfriend coming in because he'll go to Maryland hunting and he goes very early in the morning. I thought I was just stopping in to have coffee. So I got up and I was just kind of rubbing my eyes, going out expecting to see my boyfriend there. As I was walking past my...

washer and dryer. I looked up and I saw a man crouched down beside my trash can in the kitchen and he had a butcher knife in his hand. As soon as I saw him I screamed and I turned to run back. to my room and I thought if I could get there and get the door closed but before I could even get all the way turned around he had jumped up and grabbed my arm. He was just barking orders and who else is in the house and I told him my son was in the house.

Kay's 12-year-old son was asleep in her room. The thoughts that I were having was basically just how to get him out of the house. Give him what he wants. Get him out of here. Make sure my son's safe. I don't want him hurt. He took me in the living room, had me sit down. I was saying, look, if I have a checkbook in my purse, you can have my checks, you can have my car, take all of it, and just leave. And he said, I know I can have anything I want. I didn't feel like he was there to rob me.

I really felt like he was there to rape me. And I was just very determined that I would die before that happened. I was also at the same time looking around the room to see what I could use for a weapon. but he wouldn't let me close to anything. The man tried to force Kay into her son's empty bedroom. At first, I tried to block to go in there, and he said, just come in here and sit down. I just want to talk to you.

and I'm going to leave in just a few minutes. You'll be okay. So I did. I went in and I sat on the bed. He saw that there was $5 on the stand in my son's room, and he said, whose money is that? And I said, that's my son's money here under cutting grass. He said, oh, well, I can't take that. That wouldn't be right. I have two kids, too. And he told me he had a son and a daughter. He said that I was going to let him tie me up. And I was determined that wasn't happening.

So I jumped up off the bed and at that point I made up my mind I was going to fight. I was coming out of there. I was going to get my son out of that house if I couldn't get him out. I jumped up. And at that point, he reached for me with his left hand and with the right hand started stabbing the knife at me. And this voice in my head was saying, break it, break it. So I just reached with my left hand and just grabbed the top part of the knife and just twisted it sideways.

And when I did, it broke off even with a handle. And I was shocked. I couldn't believe that the knife had broke. I took the blade and I threw it behind my son's bed thinking he would have to go get it. And he was just kind of, he hadn't realized that I broke it yet. And he was stabbing at me with the wooden part of the handle. And he had actually gotten cut. And he said, isn't that something? I brought the knife and I got cut.

He jumped over the bed when he realized the blade was gone to get the blade, and when he did, I ran out of the bedroom, and I ran for the phone, and I grabbed it, and I got the first number dialed. I dialed 9, and he was back in and grabbed the phone for me and hung it up.

He was trying to drag me back to the bedroom and I wasn't going to go. So when we got to the door jam, I just locked one leg around the door and I took my shoulder and I just thrust it into his sternum as hard as I could and knocked the air out of him. and I had him pinned to the wall. Kay's 12-year-old son was asleep in his mother's room. I started screaming for my son, and I was yelling, Nick, Nick, get up, get out of bed, come on, get out of the house, thinking if I could just hold him.

I'm sorry. He said, let me go and let me tie you up or I'm going to call the other guy in that's outside and he's going to kill your son. So I knew I couldn't fight two men. It was a split-second decision that I had to let him tie me up. Kay's attacker took her into her son's empty bedroom and tied her up. After my hands were tied, he told me to sit down on the bed. He sat down beside me.

Then he started touching me. And of course, I tried to move away a little bit, and that irritated him. He had gone into the kitchen and gotten another knife, and he started cutting my clothes off. and he tied my shirt around my mouth, and I left my jaw out so I'm thinking I could leave it loose enough to get it off. And when he saw what I was doing, he pulled it tighter.

At this point, he was really irritated because I wouldn't listen to anything he said. He told me to roll over and put my face into the pillow. The intruder sexually assaulted Kay. He said, I'm going to cut you loose before I leave. And when I do... You count to 100 before you get up. So I thought, wow, okay, he is going to let me go. He crawled on my back, and he straddled me, and at first I thought he was going to cut the ties on my hands.

But instead he reached and he grabbed me by the hair and he pulled my head back and cut my throat. The first thing I thought was, who's going to take care of my son? Is there enough life insurance? And they say your life flashes before your eyes and it really does. You. You think about all the things you haven't done. Think about all the things you still want to do. After he had started cutting my throat, he tilted my head one way and then he tilted the other and started.

cutting the other side. I was just praying, you know, please let my son be okay. And it was at that point I started saying the Lord's Prayer. And I started praying, you know, just let me go. At that point, I just, I didn't want to do it anymore. I just wanted to, I wanted to die. After he cut both sides of my neck, he kinda, he put a knife.

my throat and was basically trying to rip my larynx out and at that point the knife broke and I was kind of looking down I could see the knife in my throat and he just pulled it out the other side and He went to the kitchen and he got another knife and he came back. And that's when he started stabbing me and went back. I was very lucky. He had tied my hands so tight that he had pulled my shoulder blades together.

And they had actually made a shield over my vital organs. He continued to stab me probably about 45 times in my back. And then he took the knife and... rammed it into my ear and he turned the knife and cut the bottom part of my ear off. When he had put the knife in the front of my throat, he had caused both my lungs to collapse. I had what they call a sucking chest wound, so I was still able to breathe.

but not very well. And my mouth was just filling up with blood, and I was afraid that I was going to choke to death on the blood, so I just started spitting that out into my shirt. He took the knife, and he put it in the back of my neck and started pounding it with his fist. And when he did, it went all the way through the front and gave me a tracheotomy. So now I could breathe. But I was thinking, God, am I going to be paralyzed? He was asking me, are you dead yet?

And for whatever reason, I was in shock, I don't know, but I tried to answer him and I moaned. And when I did that, I realized instantly it was a mistake because he started stabbing me again. And I knew he wasn't going to stop until I was dead.

He was satisfied that I was dead. So I just laid there, and he got off of my back, and he stood beside me, and he grabbed me by the legs and went to roll me off of the bed. And I'm thinking, I can't try to brace myself or he'll know I'm not dead. So I let him roll me off the bed, and I just stayed limp. And he took a blanket and he just threw it over me. I heard him at the kitchen sink. I assume he was cleaning up. I was fading in and out.

And then finally, I heard the door close. So I started counting. And when I got to 60, I realized the door hadn't opened back up. So now I had to try to get up. I had to make sure my son was safe. All of mine. Muscles in my neck were cut, my chin was on my chest. My right shoulder had been completely dissected, the muscle away from the bone. But I was able to force myself into a sitting position.

And I was able to put my back against the bed and I leaned sideways and I just started pushing with everything I had and I was able to get up. And as soon as I stood up, I started staggering sideways. I walked with my shoulder against the wall. all the way out to the living room and i knocked the phone off the hook into the floor and as it fell i did too and i was laying beside it and i couldn't feel my hands so i

Tried to dial with my feet, and I dialed the first time, and I heard a squeal, so I knew the call didn't go through. And I tried a second time. I hung the phone up and tried again, and I didn't hear anything. I started to die the third time, and I just didn't have any more energy. So I rolled over on my stomach, and I just laid there. I was waiting to die. Next thing I know, I heard feet running across the kitchen floor, and I was so happy.

I knew Nick was okay. He came out and he said, Mom, are you okay? And I just started moaning. He tried to cut the wires on my hands and they were too tight. He ran down the steps, and I could hear him beating on the home next to us. The next thing I remember is my neighbors were there, and the mother of the boy who lived next door was trying to cut my hands.

the cords on my hands. And when she did, my hands were just so limp. I heard her say, oh, God, she thought I was already dead. I passed out again. And the next thing I remembered was the paramedics coming in. Kay was rushed to the hospital in critical condition. It was 10 years before Kay's attacker, Mark Eskridge, was arrested. For that entire time, he had been living in the same mobile home park as Kay.

I was surprised to find out that he lived in the same mobile home park, actually only a couple of streets over from where I lived. He attended the same church, he worked with a youth group there, and apparently he had seen me and I hadn't noticed him. In order to avoid a lengthy trial, Kaye agreed to a plea bargain for a 40-year sentence. The judge overruled the plea bargain and sentenced Eskridge to 777 years in prison.

I survived because my son came out and was able to help me to go get the help that I needed. Otherwise, I wouldn't have made it. I survived because I was determined. that I was going to make it. I was going to come through it, if nothing else, just to make sure that my son was okay.

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It's September 1976 in Mount Hood, Oregon. Johnny has just started a new job in Oregon. He borrows a company car for a sightseeing trip to the mountains. I was planning on a three-day weekend. I was going to go up to Mount Rainier and explore Mount Rainier. I kind of completed what I wanted to do on Mount Rainier and instead of going back out to the highways...

the way I went, I decided to look for a route through the wilderness straight south to Mount Hood. The roads are windy and dangerous to the point where all of the logging companies that operate in that area uh don't allow company employees to be alone in a vehicle dusk was approaching i was negotiating a hairpin turn that was on a bridge over a gulf about 150 or 70 feet high

I got over the bridge and as I exited the bridge, I came to a portion of the shoulder that was totally washed out to the edge of the road. Immediately, as soon as that shoulder was gone, The car started rolling sideways down the hill. It was being thrown from side to side around the car inside and I knew that I was absolutely in a horrific event. Johnny's car rolled down into the 170-foot deep ravine. It landed on a pine tree in the riverbed below.

was in the exact place where that root came through and it crushed the foot into the dashboard and my foot was right here in the crease of that dashboard. I was laying on my stomach. on the inside roof of the car facing the rear of the car near the passenger window the weight of the car was basically on my foot i couldn't move i was pinned i furiously

pulled on my leg, which was extremely painful. I pulled on my shoe. I had just purchased new shoes and I ripped all of the rubber and material away from the shoe. except where it was pinned by the car. That's how hard I pulled and how vigorously I tried to remove myself. As a practicing nurse, Johnny knew he could bleed to death if he was wounded.

I checked my body for bleeding. I had no bleeders. I was happy to be alive, but knew I probably had really screwed up. I thought about my job, frankly. It was one of the first things I thought about. Probably going to get fired now for doing this. Johnny had no means of contacting anyone. I assumed, because I heard cars up above, that I would be rescued any minute that evening. I figured someone would just come down the hill.

and find me because I could see the lights going by up above. The reality is they're crossing a bridge that's on a hairpin turn. They weren't looking down, period. Johnny tried to make himself comfortable through the night. Two days passed and still no one came to his rescue. The first couple of days were pretty tough mentally because I just couldn't figure out why no one was helping me.

I knew that I needed to get some water in me. I was fortunate in that where the car landed, I was about 15 feet from water, a small river that was still running fairly well. Johnny tried for hours to get water from the stream. I had some camping equipment. I would pull the wire out of the car and tie it to a coffee pot. throw it in the stream 15 feet away and by the time it got back it would be spilled over. I used an empty soda can, tried the same thing. Ultimately what I did was use a t-shirt.

wrapped up in some string from the sleeping bag and I would just throw it into the stream, let it sit a few seconds, bring it back and squeeze it into my mouth. Johnny's family and friends were looking for him in the wrong area. When the sun came up in the morning I would get some water, wash myself off, drink for a while, and then I would make some notes.

The notes that I wrote were very short, I miss you, things like that. It was something that if they found me dead then at least my family would know that I was thinking of them. What had happened to me in the crash was I had punctured a lung. And within the first week, my eyes started swelling up and I felt my glands.

I thought I was getting an infection because my throat was swelling. Air from Johnny's punctured lung was causing his throat and eyes to swell. I could see the lights at night from the cars, and I could see the cars. during the day as they passed over the bridge for a real short amount of time. There was one kind of opening in the foilage. so that I could get a glimpse of them as they went by. By about the fifth day, I really began to realize that those cars going by can't see me.

So then I began a plan, created a plan to get them to see me or attract attention. Although Johnny's foot was pinned, he could still move the rest of his body. He searched the car for items he could use to save himself. There was string, there was wire, there was masking tape, a mirror. I had my tennis racket. There were things like the tools from the rear of the car. I taped.

the rear view mirror from the car to my tennis racket when the sun was visible outside the window of the car with my left hand i could practice with the light and I would flash at birds, I would follow birds. So then when a car came by, I could flash up and down the side of that car very accurately to attract attention. But ultimately that...

that didn't work. It was a disappointment. I didn't get any sense that people could see me at all. Towards the end of the first week I realized that I would have to get out of that vehicle myself. I knew my foot was dead by then. I had a piece of glass from broken windows and stuff and I actually forced it into my foot and I didn't have any feeling anymore.

The first thing I tried to do was use the tire tool like an axe and swing it at the root. Pine roots are very tough and rubbery and it would bounce off. I would hit my leg. which was very painful. I had very little vertical space to operate in, so any movements to the left or right were difficult because when I twisted my body, I would hit the roof or the crushed part of the car. Unfortunately, I couldn't see the target area because my eyes had swollen up so much.

because of the air entering my interstitial spaces because I had punctured a lung in the crash. Johnny entered the second week of his ordeal and began fearing for his life. The wilderness area that I was stuck in... gets into the low 40s every night, that part of the country has all animals, which means it has cougars, it has bears, it has wolverines or whatever nasty animals that are out there.

So I was really concerned at night about being met or being visited, I should say, by an animal, a wild animal. I wasn't worried about starving. I knew I could live without food for at least a month or more easily. I was more worried about gangrene. I knew the clock was ticking on getting an infection that would go throughout my body and ultimately kill me.

My next thought was to get a hammer, some type of a heavy device, and use the tire iron as a chisel. There were numerous shot put size rocks laying everywhere. They were about three or four feet below me. In older vehicles, the inside fabric on the roof of the car was held in place by spring steel bands. I ripped those out of the roof.

On one end I bent over a hook of about two inches in diameter. I tied string to that hook and with that hook and the string I would put a web around a good-sized rock. and then grab that string with the hook in. Every time I had one close to the car and started lifting it at four feet, it would just fall out of the net I made. I thought the best way to get a rock inside the car would be to

throw my suitcase out there. Finally, I was able to get a rock inside the suitcase. I closed my suitcase with the hook of the tire of the headliner and just brought the suitcase back into the car and I had a rock. The first thing I did was take the tire iron in one hand and take the rock in the other and swing that rock as hard as I could on that tire iron. The tire iron went...

deep into that root, and I could feel how deep it went in. And within a couple of hours, I was able to get my foot out and get free. I scrambled out of the car as quickly as I could, got down to the stream. and really, really hydrated myself. I drank a lot of water and just sat there for a few minutes in that water, enjoying the fact that I was out of that vehicle. He climbs out of the ravine onto the road.

After I got up, I sat on the road for probably 15 or 20 minutes, and sure enough, one of the construction trucks that had been going by me for a couple of weeks stopped, and I got out on the road and flagged them down. and told him that I had been stuck in that ravine for over two weeks. I needed medical attention right away. The truck driver took Johnny to the hospital, where he was reunited with his family.

My girlfriend was just totally elated and happy and weeping and everybody was. You know, they were going through hell not knowing where I was. Johnny's foot was amputated, and he now wears a prosthetic limb. After about three years of being an amputee, I began to get more active. I moved to Utah and got into cross-country ski racing.

And then I moved to Kansas and took up triathlon. I've done the Antarctica Marathon. I won the World Triathlon Championships in 1998. And now I really focus the bulk of my time on providing handicapped sports for others. I believe I survived because, one, I had the will to do it, I had the educational background, I had the training, and I had some luck. in ending up in a place that had the natural resources available to me so that I could use my skills and take advantage of them.

It's January 1994 in Rockland County, New York. Scott and his friend Michael are college freshmen. I was 18 years old at the time. Michael was my best friend. We had actually met as kids on a Little League field. So we had known each other since we were approximately about eight years old. We were pretty much inseparable. Scott and Michael were at a shopping mall. We noticed an individual lounging on the back of the car.

next to where we had parked. As we started approaching the Jeep, this individual started to approach us. And pretty much when he came eye to eye with us, he looked us dead in the eye, put his head down and continued walking. And I remember Michael saying to me, that seems kind of odd. We got into the Jeep, and as I went with my left hand to reach across to grab the seatbelt, the door opened up, and the next thing I knew, I had a gun.

shoved in against my side we never saw it coming uh never saw him turn around come back to the car and all of a sudden i'm looking down and i see this gun shoved in against my side and i'm thinking to myself Is this really happening? I was directed to get in the back of the Jeep. He told us he was going to take the Jeep and he was just going to tie us up long enough for him to get away because he didn't want to get caught. The man told Michael to start driving. He was taking us in areas.

where I never even knew in my 18 years of living in the county. We were both scared. Michael was scared. I was scared. And I decided to ask questions. I asked him how old he was and where he was from. and he told me he was 23, and he told me he was from Brooklyn. The information that he was given wasn't information that you would give someone because you wanted to get away. At that point in time...

going through my head was like, we're going to die. But this isn't going to end pretty. He'd started taking us to one destination where they were renovating an old house. And he made us pull in. And then when he saw that there were people there, He made us turn around. He went to a second destination, and in this second destination, there was new construction going on. And again, he saw people there and made us turn around. Michael was...

was trying to be as calm as possible. But you could see that he was jittery and that he was scared, as was I. This is something that you hear on the news or you see in a TV program. You never, ever think that This is going to be you. Being 18 years old at the time, there's so much life ahead of you. You're just thinking of the future. You're never, ever waking up in the morning and thinking, today might be the day I'm going to die.

It was just a sick feeling because all I could think about at the time was my mother and thinking, oh my God, she's going to be so worried when I'm not home for dinner. I continued to ask more and more questions, how he knew the area and such. and he was very free with giving me the information. The more and more information that was being given, you can tell that this was very, very well planned out by this person. There was no good intentions, there was...

No letting us go. This was being done for a reason. This was being done to steal the Jeep and to kill us. The whole time that we're driving, the gun is against Michael. It's being held low so that anybody, any passers-by... can't see it the thought went through my mind that a jeep seat has a lever under the bottom way if you if i could have moved my foot underneath lifted it up and just pushed it forward you know but at the same time though thinking that okay well

What if I get my friend killed? Each area that we were taken to, one was more deserted than the other. That was only the third and final destination that we were told to get out of the car. He said, OK. He goes, well, you guys cooperated. He goes, now I want you to walk behind this pile of wood chips. This area that we were in, it was a field that was being cleared, and there was evergreens all around, so we were pretty much camouflaged from the road. And he passes by.

couldn't really see us. He then tells us, OK, I want both of you to lay face down in the snow with your hands behind your back and don't look at me. Scott and Michael both lay down in the snow. Michael was pleading because we did what you asked. He's like, you said you weren't going to hurt us. He goes, shut up and listen to what I say. And I'm watching Michael this whole time as I'm laying next to him, maybe not even a foot away from him. And I hear the last words.

to come out of my friend's mouth. I was, please don't do this. I have a mother. I have a sister. And then, bang, shot him square in the back of his head. I'm watching this the whole time. I'm not supposed, my face is supposed to be in the snow and not looking at this. And now it's really starting to set in that this is it. It's over. And again, could only think of how worried my mother was going to be.

And he then points the gun at me and he tells me, I told you not to look. I told you to keep your face in the snow. He's walking around me and straddling over me. Now I'm waiting for him to just reach down and shoot me. I was more or less waiting to die. And it seemed like it was taking forever. At the same time, though, I'm not scared. I'm kind of at peace because I'm with my best friend.

going with my best friend i'm not going to be alone and um you know start thinking about all the things that i accomplished in my 18 years I knew what it was like to hit the game-winning home run. I knew what it was like to throw a no-hitter. I was a bat boy for the New York Yankees, so I achieved my goal of being a Yankee. made my mother proud, my father proud, my sister, my family. And this, all of a sudden, it was, I could see like this book just like laid out and just saw.

From the front, pages being thumbed and from birth and kind of like all the highlights in my life. And then all of a sudden, the pages went blank. And then that's when I felt it and I heard it. Bang. Something is telling me, turn your head. At that last moment, I turned my head. I heard the bang and felt the impact of the bullet. And instead of getting shot square in the back of the head like Michael was, I got shot right...

in the back of my head behind my ear. The bullet came in and went out the side of my face. I just heard ringing and then like just throbbing. Then I heard the jeep start up and I then looked over the pile of wood chips again and saw.

the jeep start driving away i checked on michael and i got a couple of faint moans from him so he wasn't dead he wasn't dead uh he was still alive but um unresponsive So I tried to collect myself and looked around the area that we were in and noticed that in the distance across the street, there were these white buildings. I ran. I'd gotten it.

up and and i ran across the street and was banging on the doors saying please please you got to help and i remember seeing my reflection in the window of of the door and like oh oh my was a a man working there They called 911 right away. Using Scott's detailed description, police stopped and arrested the killer 25 minutes later. Scott was taken by an ambulance to a nearby hospital. Michael was airlifted to a different hospital.

Later on that evening when I'm in my hospital room with my mother and my father and my sister was when I had found out that Michael had passed. And I remember just crying, being confused, being angry. not understanding why the same guardian angel that was looking after me wasn't looking after him. Trying to process that I'm never going to be able to talk to my friend, to see him again, you know, to tell him that I love him, to thank him.

Thank him for being my best friend. It's not fair. Michael's killer, Edward Lamont Summers, was a pre-medical college student. Summers was sentenced to 75 years in prison. I survived because at that last second, I turned my head. And if I didn't go with my inner instinct, that inner voice, what I consider to be my guardian angel being there for me. If I didn't listen to that voice, I don't think I would have been here today. And because of that, I survived.