A sexual assault victim is speaking out after her decision to sue a grocery store following her kidnapping.
A representative for the victim first confirmed the lawsuit on Thursday - several months after this West Georgia University student was abducted from a Kroger in Carrollton, Georgia.
Her own actions, warning her boyfriend and turning on her phone's GPS, may have been the only reason she was finally found far away near yet another Kroger - this one in midtown Atlanta. But she was not found before being sexually assaulted by the suspect, 28-year-old Timothy Wilson.
On Friday, she spoke with 11Alive about the horrible ordeal and struggle for just one thing: survival.
"I felt something poking me. He was standing right there and he told me to get in," she said crying and unable finish her words.
It was the beginning of the ordeal that would take miles upon miles from her home She said he had already pressed a knife against her and all he had to do was push to hurt her. She began to hope for a better outcome - that this wasn't really happening.
In the back of my head, I was hoping for the best, maybe he did just need to get to Atlanta and I could drop him off and leave," she said. "But that's now how it went."
The attacker took her up a hill to a church and backed into a parking space in a back corner. Then, he told her to take off her clothes and assaulted her. The student who had just moments early been at a local grocery store now thought she was going to die.
"He told me it would really just be easier to get rid of my body because he was already doing so much wrong," she said.
He then made a comment that she said hit her hard saying that there was "no purpose in crying".
"Because crying wasn't going to help anything. It wasn't going to get me out of the situation I was in. It wasn't beneficial, so I had to keep my head on straight, think logically."
Then she bravely took an action that may have ultimately saved her life - while also possibly risking it.
"I told him I can't take you where you need to be unless I have my phone," she said.
From that point forward, he never took his eyes off the road, she said. So she took the opportunity to turn down the brightness on her phone and alert her boyfriend of her kidnap.
"My roommate texted me that help was on the way," she said. "So, I kind of assumed that they were coming from Carrollton and I thought, OK, all I have to do is make it an hour - just an hour."
During the ride, she had asked him questions about where he was from and what types of music he listened to - trying to stay alive and keep him from turning on her. Buying time.
However, at one point he became suspicious.
"He asked me why I was being so nice and I honestly told him," she said. "I just want to go back to school. I told him I'm just trying to get you where you need to be so I can get where I need to be."
Then the moment finally arrived. She saw the police before he did.
"He was in complete panic mode," she said. "But I was just glad that he was more focused on him getting away than keeping me with him."
He ran away and she ran toward police with eyes welling with tears, a moment she described the "best feeling of my life."
The blue lights she described as a blessing - amazing.
"Not panicking, keeping my head straight," she said. "I probably could have done things differently but I made it, so at the end of the day, that's all that matters."
Living: it's the most important thing to her right now.
"I pray to God I never encounter anything like that again, but, at the end of the day, it feels good to be alive," she said.
Her new lawsuit aims to make sure something like this never happens to someone else at that store contending that had there been more security, her kidnap and sexual assault may have never happened.
