Emily Byles says her 11-year-old daughter saved her life.
Byles, 30, told Fox10 Phoenix that the girl called 911 while the Arizona mother was being stabbed and beaten by fiancé Zachary Velasquez on Oct. 5, roughly one month before their scheduled wedding in Glendale. The eldest of Byles’ two children has earned her mother’s lasting gratitude for interrupting an attack that police say left Byles covered in blood and convinced she would die.
“She’s very, very brave, and I couldn’t imagine what she’s going through,” Byles told the station.
Responding officers forced entry into the bedroom after hearing Byles’ cries and found her “laying down on her back covered in blood,” according to a probable cause statement. The victim immediately told officers that Velasquez was trying to kill her.
Velasquez, who had been using methamphetamine according to Byles’ account to police, allegedly told her “he was a prophet and tried to kill her in order to save her.” The attack involved scissors, with Byles sustaining multiple stab wounds including a cut artery, plus dozens of blows to her head and severe bruising across her face and neck.
“He wasn’t trying to just hurt me. He was trying to end my life,” Byles insisted to Fox10, with photos showing her hospitalized in a neck brace with two black eyes and visible cuts.
The assault also threatened Byles’ two daughters directly, though both survived physically unharmed. Byles herself did not immediately realize she had been stabbed amid the chaos.
“I felt like maybe I died because it was like an out-of-body experience of going past earth and past heaven,” she told Fox10.
Byles added that she was “completely mortified that someone that says he loves me and would protect me would just literally try to murder me.”
Velasquez has been charged with aggravated assault. He admitted to police that he punched Byles and put her in a chokehold, but claimed the violence was self-defense which did not report details of his alleged threat.
Byles detailed her survival in an online fundraiser, writing that “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.”
The family has been displaced from their Glendale home, which Byles described on the fundraising site as “unlivable” with “too much blood to clean up.” She is staying with a friend while healing, and her daughters are out of town with her sister.
“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.
Byles had recently relocated to Glendale to be with Velasquez before the Oct. 5 attack shattered their plans. The couple’s wedding was scheduled for roughly one month later.
