An Arizona bride-to-be says her fiancé stabbed her in the neck just weeks before their wedding, and that her “very, very brave” eldest daughter saved her by calling 911.
Emily Byles, a 30-year-old mother of two, told Fox10 Phoenix that she had recently moved to Glendale to live with her fiancé, Zachary Velasquez. She said he attacked her with scissors on Oct. 5, about a month before their wedding was scheduled to take place.
“He wasn’t trying to just hurt me. He was trying to end my life,” Byles said. Photos show her recovering in a hospital with two black eyes, a neck brace, and cuts across her face and neck.
“I was stabbed multiple times, my artery was cut, and I was severely beaten. I was not supposed to survive, but by God’s grace I did,” Byles wrote in an online fundraiser.
Byles told police that Velasquez had been using methamphetamine and “threateningly told her he was a prophet and tried to kill her in order to save her,” according to People magazine.
Velasquez struck Byles in the head dozens of times, and she said she did not immediately realize that she had also been stabbed.
“I felt like maybe I died because it was like an out-of-body experience of going past earth and past heaven,” Byles told Fox10. She said she was “completely mortified that someone who says he loves me and would protect me would literally try to murder me.”
Byles said her two daughters were also threatened during the violent attack, which ended only after her 11-year-old daughter called 911.
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“She’s very, very brave, and I couldn’t imagine what she’s going through,” Byles told the station.
Police responding to the emergency “forced entry into the bedroom” after hearing Byles’ cries. Officers found her “laying down on her back covered in blood,” according to a probable cause statement obtained by People.
“The victim advised officers the defendant was trying to kill her,” the statement said.
Velasquez has been charged with aggravated assault.
He admitted to police that he punched his fiancée and placed her in a chokehold, but claimed he acted in self-defense, according to People. The outlet did not provide further details about how he said he had been threatened.
Byles wrote on a fundraising page that she was recovering at a friend’s home, while her daughters were staying out of town with her sister. She said their own home had become “unlivable,” with “too much blood to clean up.”
“My fiancé, the person who attacked me, is now in jail, but my children and I are still living with the trauma of what happened,” she wrote.
