36-year-old Seattle runner Kelly Herron experienced what she described as her “biggest nightmare”: facing an attacker hiding in a women’s restroom.
Herron was 4 miles into her run when she stopped to use a public restroom in Seattle’s Golden Gardens Park. 40-year-old Gary Steiner, a registered sex offender from Arizona, was hiding in a stall and assaulted her. Steiner threw Herron to the ground and tried to remove her pants, and she says that’s when she went into attack mode.
She described the experience in an Instagram post: “I fought for my life screaming (“Not today, M**F**er!”), clawing his face, punching back, and desperately trying to escape his grip – never giving up. I was able to lock him in the bathroom until police arrived. Thankfully I just took a self-defense class offered at my work and utilized all of it. My face is stitched, my body is bruised, but my spirit is intact.”
Her post currently has over 20 thousand likes.
She told ABC News that “Not today, mother f***er” became her “battle cry” as she fought off her attacker.
Herron also said she “learned to put hard bones in soft, fleshy areas,” in the self-defense workshop she attended a few weeks earlier.
Steiner has been charged with attempted second-degree rape and second-degree assault with sexual motivation.
Herron wrote in another Instagram post: “I couldn’t remain the silent, anonymous victim- there is a message of survival that is too important to remain untold. I’m grateful to have found the right people to help me tell it. Thank you.”
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