(WSVN) - A woman managed to fend off an attacker, crediting a self-defense class she had recently taken.
Kelly Herron, 36, said she was training for a marathon in Seattle when she made a brief stop at a park restroom.
“I used the restroom and went to wash my hands and I had my hands under the dryer and then turned around and there was a man right in front of me whose face was covered,” Herron told Inside Edition. “He lunged at me and I immediately just started to go into fight mode.”
Herron said the attacker threw her to the ground and repeatedly punched her. That’s when she decided to fight back, using techniques she learned at a self-defense class through work just a few weeks prior.
“I had one hand to use so I just started clawing his face and punching him in the face with the side of my hand,” she said. “All I kept screaming during the attack was, ‘Not today, motherf***er!’ I was screaming it like an animal. It was the most vicious savage part of my being. There was no way I was going to let this guy rape me.”
Herron managed to lock her assailant in the bathroom until police responded to the scene, where the arrested Gary Steiner, a registered sex offender. He was convicted of sexually assaulting several women in Arizona in 1999, and again for indecent exposure in 2008.
Steiner has been charged with attempted second-degree rape, as well as second-degree assault with sexual motivation.
Herron said suffered bruises and needed stitches above her left eye after the attack.
“My face is stitched, my body is bruised, but my spirit is intact,” Herron wrote on Instagram.
[protected-iframe id=”ed1f0a39d308b78ce908fd229cd73b49-110336915-112670968″ info=”//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js” class=”instagram-media”]
Copyright 2024 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.