NORTON SHORES, Mich. -- Holding her hands in her lap, sitting near a friend Tuesday, Dallas calmly recalled the moment she stood nearly face-to-face with an intruder in her home less than 24 hours earlier.
"It just doesn't feel the same; it doesn't feel like home," said Dallas, who FOX 17 is identifying only by her first name.
Speaking very calmly remembering the details of her attack, Dallas, 23, is recovering from a deep stab wound to her chest, scratches on her forehead, and is overall "very, very sore" from being kicked repeatedly.
"[I] made sure all the doors were locked and everything before I took a shower, got out of the shower and I heard some noises that I thought was my cat," she remembered.
Doing everything right, locking her windows and doors, Dallas says she walked out of the shower around 3 p.m. Monday in her home on Aue Road in a towel. She thought she heard her cat making "shuffling" noises in the hall, when she found herself feet from an intruder completely covered in dark clothing, wearing a mask and rubber gloves.
"[I] went to go back down the hallway to grab my phone and call police and he grabbed my head and pushed it through the wall, there’s a hole in the wall in the hallway, and that left me kind of dizzy and disoriented, and I fell down in the kitchen," said Dallas.
"And he repeatedly kicked me in the abdomen and the ribs, and missed at one point and kicked a hole in the wall. I hit my head off the tile in the kitchen."
Dallas shared details of the horrifying attack, telling FOX 17 it felt "like it was going on forever when I was down on the ground." She says the intruder broke into her home through her locked garage door and then the locked door from the garage to her kitchen.
She does not recall the man saying a word or making any noise throughout the attack, and feels at times his body language looked "shocked" when she kicked back and when he stabbed her.
"I was able to kick him at one point, which kind of startled him a little bit, and fell back and I stood up," she said, "and that’s when he grabbed the knife off the counter and stabbed me in the chest and then after he did that he ran out the door."
When the suspect ran out the door to the attached garage that she says he broke through, Dallas called 911 and police were at her home in "less than three minutes." She didn't see a car in her driveway, but couldn't tell if the suspect drove or ran away.
Working as a surgical technician at a local hospital, Dallas says she has no explanation for what happened.
"I don’t have any enemies at all," she said.
"I don’t really do anything out of the ordinary as far as my social activities or anything like that. Pretty simple as far as day to day goes, so nothing that I can think of."
Monday a police K-9 was unsuccessful in tracking the suspect, and police share the description of the man Dallas provided: about 5'8" with a medium build, who was wearing a black ski mask, black zip-up hoodie, dark jeans, and black rubber gloves.
Dallas says she feels unsafe in her own home.
"[I'm] very, very sore, and it’s a different feeling," she tells FOX 17.
"I have never really had any home invasion or anything like that, so it’s definitely--it doesn’t really feel like home sitting here."
If you have any additional information call Norton Shores Police or Silent Observer at: (616) 774-2345.
