NEW YORK (WABC) — A 27-year-old New York City woman is recovering after she said she was slashed during a birthday hiking trip on the Havasupai Reservation in Arizona.<\/p>\n
Alexis Rowan needed 10 stitches in her neck and three stitches on her left hand after the attack.<\/p>\n
It happened last Wednesday as Rowan was completing 8 miles of a 10-mile hike.<\/p>\n
She had briefly separated from a friend who was walking ahead of her when she encountered 29-year-old Taylor Nardo Paya, a Havasupai tribe member and previously convicted felon for robbery.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t think anything of it, it was the first person that I’ve seen in the village. And I said, ‘hey, excuse me, is that the gift shop?'” Rowan said.<\/p>\n
Rowan said she immediately felt uneasy during the encounter.<\/p>\n
“I kept walking, I went to go in and that’s when he just came up from behind…and as soon as I felt my neck, I’m like, ‘oh my God, I’m going to die,'” she said.<\/p>\n
In Ring camera video, it appears as if Paya was trying to drag Rowan away after she fell to the ground.<\/p>\n
“I was like, oh my God, my neck., I can’t die like this, this is not the way, and I was like, I have my kids to go home to,” Rowan said.<\/p>\n
Reservation police tracked Paya down the following day by pinging Rowan’s stolen phone and arrested him.<\/p>\n
Rowan’s mother, Tricia Rowan, credited a woman who heard her daughter’s screams and opened a door to help.<\/p>\n
“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 said.<\/p>\n
She said her daughter fought to survive the attack.<\/p>\n
“And 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.<\/p>\n
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