A scenic birthday hike turned into a harrowing ordeal for a New York City mother of two. Attacked in the Arizona mountains, she sustained slash wounds to her neck and hand that required 13 stitches, leaving her with physical and emotional scars that will be difficult to forget.
Alexis Rowan, aged 27, narrowly escaped a violent assault during her mountain trek in Northern Arizona. Her piercing screams, caught on a doorbell camera, drew the attention of a nearby resident, prompting the attacker to retreat.
“As I lay there, the thought that I couldn’t die like this consumed me. I have my kids waiting for me,” Rowan shared with WABC after returning to New York City following the terrifying incident during her trip in Arizona.
Captured on a Ring camera, footage shows 27-year-old Rowan battling against an assailant in the Arizona mountains. Her desperate cries for help compelled a nearby woman to rush out, leading the attacker to flee the scene. (FOX 10 Phoenix)
Disturbing images, published by the New York Post, reveal the severity of Rowan’s injuries, including a deep laceration across her neck stitched with 10 sutures and additional wounds on her hand.
She never wants “to look at another mountain again,” she told the Post, while the lasting scar will remind her of the horror with every look in the mirror.
On the Wednesday, Aug. 19, hike at the Havasupai Indian Reservation – just one day after her 27th birthday – Alexis was left briefly behind a friend when the suspect approached. The suspect, identified as Taylor Nardo Paya, 29, is a Havasupai tribe member with a rap sheet that included a guilty plea to assault, according to FOX 10 Phoenix.
Ring camera footage showed Arizona mountain hiker Alexis Rowan, 27, fighting her attacker who had just slashed her neck with a knife as she bleeds profusely. (FOX 10 Phoenix/Ring)
“It was the first person that I’ve seen in the village, and I said, ‘Hey, excuse me, is that the gift shop?'” Rowan told WABC in one of the few interviews she granted. News Media reached out to her and her mother for an interview, but they have yet to respond.
“I kept walking, I went to go in and that’s when he just came up from behind,” she continued, “and as soon as I felt my neck, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die.'”
Footage showed Rowan fighting for her life as she was dragged by the hair from the ground – with her screams finally bringing a woman to open the door and causing the suspect to flee. The video obtained by News Media did not have the sound of the screams, but they were key to the suspect fleeing, according to reports.
Federal police usher the neck-slashing suspect off after arresting him using the pings to the cellphone he reportedly stole from Alexis Rowan, 27, video from local authorities showed. (FOX 10 Phoenix)
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“I’m just so grateful for the woman that opened the door that heard her screams; it’s something you can never unhear,” Tricia Rowan, Alexis’ mother, told WABC of the “angel sent from heaven” woman who opened the door to help.
“She’s a fighter. She fought to make sure she’s coming home to her babies, and she’s my baby. So I’m so glad she made it,” Tricia Rowan said. “He picked the wrong one. My daughter is a fighter, she is a warrior. She wasn’t going to take it.”
Federal police usher the neck-slashing suspect off to the helicopter, video from local authorities showed. (FOX 10 Phoenix)
Alexis Rowan told the Post she was “mentally aware” of the “danger” after her initial interaction with Paya.
“My gut instinct was like, ‘This is not OK. I’m not OK,’” she said, adding that the “next person may not be as strong, may not be prepared mentally that someone is going to attack them or able to put them in danger.”
Reservation police located Paya the following day by pinging Rowan’s phone, which prosecutors say he allegedly stole after it fell from one of her backpacks.
Alexis Rowan, 27, is holding her slashed and bloodied neck as she walks up to the home of the woman that came out of the house to scare off her attacker, saving her life, Ring camera footage showed. (FOX 10 Phoenix/Ring)
He was arrested and later taken into federal custody because the alleged attack occurred on tribal land, according to reports. Video obtained by News Media showed Paya being cuffed and taken away on a golf cart by federal police before another video showed him in an orange jumpsuit being perp-walked to a helicopter.
Paya faces a federal assault with a deadly weapon charge, according to FOX 10. Court records show Paya pleaded guilty in 2016 to robbing and assaulting another woman in a 2015 attack, for which he received a five-year prison sentence and was ordered to undergo sex offender treatment and counseling.
The victim’s mother wants to see the perpetrator locked up indefinitely.
“People are evil,” she told the Post, calling him “a threat to society” and someone “you cannot rehabilitate.”
“There is no place on earth that they belong,” she added, “other than behind bars like an animal in a cage because they’re predators and they prey on innocent victims.”