Haunting pizza delivery experience: Knife attack remains a vivid memory for Boles
|
“I can still see his face in my nightmares,” Boles said during an interview with the Southern Standard, reaching up to touch her throat which was lined with over 100 stitches from the attack. “I dream about what happened. I can’t get it out of my mind.”
The 23-year-old pizza delivery woman was attacked Saturday evening as she delivered a pizza on Old Viola Road. The suspect, described as a white, male in his 20s with shoulder-length hair, slashed her throat with a knife before fleeing, taking only a few pizzas and leaving around $200 behind.
The incident happened outside an abandoned house and was apparently a set-up since the pizza order was called in from another phone and a fake phone number was given. The caller said he would meet her on the porch since there was no electricity at the house. The man was, in fact, waiting on the porch when Boles arrived.
“I really didn’t think too much about the place not having electricity since there’d been a big storm come through. I figured the electricity had just been knocked out by the storm,” Boles recalled. “He was standing on the porch so I walked up with the pizzas and asked how he was doing. He said fine.”
The response to her question was the only word she heard from her attacker as she had no idea of what was about to happen.
“He reached in his pocket and I figured it was to get the money to pay me,” Boles said. “Then, all of a sudden, he reaches out with the knife and cuts my throat. There was no warning, no nothing.”
Consumed with panic after suffering a cut which ran from the base of her jaw almost to her ear, Boles said she screamed and began running while her attacker ran off in the other direction.
“Blood was just pouring,” Boles recalled. “I was screaming and yelling for help as I ran but I couldn’t find anybody until this woman with her little boy came out to help me.”
Boles said she will never forget the kindness of the little boy, probably about 8 years of age, who took the shirt off his back to hold it over her bleeding wound.
“They probably saved my life and that’s something for which I’ll always be grateful,” Boles said, noting she intends to do something for them as a token of her appreciation.
Boles spent two days at Vanderbilt University Hospital where doctors repaired the damage caused by the attack. Although suffering nerve damage, Boles said she is expected to recover from the slashing, at least physically.
As for her attacker, Boles said she has no idea who the man was or what his motive was in the attack.
“I think he did it out of meanness,” Boles said. “I mean, he didn’t take the money, so why else would he have done it? The pizzas were thrown down just a bit down the road. This was all a set-up.”
Boles said she will never deliver pizzas again and says she is worried for other people given the man’s willingness to kill.
“I’m very worried for the other delivery people and I hope they will be careful,” Boles said. “I hope they are able to find this guy quick before he does this to someone else because he had no hesitation about doing this to me.”
Police say they are looking at various potential suspects and motives. Anyone having information concerning the crime is asked to call investigator Marry Canter at McMinnville Police Department at 473-3386.