By Vanessa Brown
MARCH 12, 2017 6:48AM
A JOGGER in Seattle has been left beaten, bloodied and bruised after she was attacked while training for a marathon in her local park.
Kelly Herron, who was out for a 15km run through a local park, encountered the “nightmare” situation when she stopped for a toilet break at a public bathroom.
“As I was drying my hands I became aware that something was wrong,” Ms Herron told ABC America.
When Ms Herron turned around, she said she saw a man standing in the bathroom. It was then, according to local police, that the man assaulted her.
“He immediately took me down to the ground, hit both my knees and legs, and then it was a fight on the bathroom floor,” she said.
“I just kept screaming, ‘not today m****r f***er’”, while fighting the 40-year-old man off with self-defence moves she’d learnt just weeks earlier.
Ms Herron explained that she repeatedly screamed the phrase at him while fighting him off as a “battle cry”.
Fortunately, the 36-year-old was able to escape her attacker and fled to a vacant cubicle in an attempt to barricade herself from her attacker.
“I got into that stall flipped on my back and I tried to kick the door lock shut with my foot,” Ms Herron said.
The alleged attacker reportedly came into the cubicle from the side and started beating Ms Herron in the face.
In a desperate attempt to get away from the man, Ms Herron started to scratch back.
“All those little things that I learned in my life ... how to punch and everything came back to me,” she said.
“I started to feel like I was going to lose consciousness ... but I got another surge of adrenaline and I reached for the door and was able to get out.”
Ms Herron took to Instagram to share a photo of her beaten and bloodied face, explaining the ordeal as her “biggest running nightmare becoming a reality”.
“My face is stitched, my body is bruised, but my spirit is intact,” she said.
In an interview with Kiro 7, Ms Herron explained how she is just “really grateful” to have survived.
“I was screaming at him ... being loud and not afraid,” she said.
“I mean you are afraid, but letting him know you are not taking me down today. You are not going to win this fight.
“That was the only thing that was motivating me ... I cannot be raped by this guy in this place.”
Ms Herron’s Instagram post, which has received more than 15,000 likes and 1,000 comments, hopes it will encourage other women to be empowered with the same knowledge she has.
“We don’t have to go down,” she said. “We don’t have to be quiet about it,” she said.
Mr Steiner is reportedly being held in jail on $US750,000 bail, and according to court documents faces charges of attempted rape and second degree assault.
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Vanessa is a lifestyle reporter for news.com.au. After graduating with a degree in media and broadcast, she landed a job with the Today Show as a producer. Vanessa spent five years with the breakfast program, which saw her working across the country and the world on various entertainment, news and lifestyle stories. Vanessa has a great interest in food, fitness, beauty, health and home.
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This article was originally published on March 12, 2017 at http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/us-jogger-kelly-herron-has-explained-how-she-fought-her-way-out-of-a-bathroom-attack/news-story/266afe7f65db5734ff60b07efc84f189