An Arizona woman says her fiancé stabbed her in the neck just weeks before their wedding, and that her life was saved when her “very, very brave” 11-year-old daughter called 911.
Emily Byles, a 30-year-old mother of two, had recently moved to Glendale to live with her fiancé, Zachary Velasquez. She told Fox10 Phoenix that he attacked her with scissors on Oct. 5, roughly one month before the couple’s scheduled wedding.
“He wasn’t trying to just hurt me. He was trying to end my life,” Byles said. Photos show her recovering in a hospital with two black eyes, a neck brace and multiple cuts across her face and neck.
“I was stabbed multiple times, my artery was cut, and I was severely beaten. I was not supposed to survive, but by God’s grace I did,” Byles wrote in an online fundraiser.
According to People magazine, Byles told police that Velasquez had been using methamphetamine. She said he threatened her while claiming he was a prophet and that killing her was necessary to save her.
Byles said she was struck in the head dozens of times and did not realize right away that she had also been stabbed.
“I felt like maybe I died because it was like an out-of-body experience of going past Earth and past heaven,” she told Fox10. Byles said she was “completely mortified that someone that says he loves me and would protect me would just literally try to murder me.”
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Her two daughters were also threatened during the violent attack, which ended only after her eldest child, 11, called 911.
“She’s very, very brave, and I couldn’t imagine what she’s going through,” Byles told the station.
Police responding to the emergency “forced entry into the bedroom” after hearing Byles screaming, according to a probable cause statement obtained by People. Officers found her “laying down on her back covered in blood.”
“The victim advised officers the defendant was trying to kill her,” the statement said.
Velasquez has been charged with aggravated assault.
He acknowledged punching Byles and placing her in a chokehold, but told police he acted in self-defense, People reported. The publication did not provide further details about the threat he said prompted his actions.
In a fundraising post, Byles said she was recovering at a friend’s home while her daughters were staying out of town with her sister. She described the family home as “unlivable” because there was “too much blood to clean up.”
“My fiancé, the person who attacked me, is now in jail, but my children and I are still living with the trauma of what happened,” Byles wrote.