Alexis Rowan has spoken out about surviving a slashing attack during her Arizona birthday hiking trip.
Rowan, 27, was on a 10-mile hike on the Havasupai Reservation in Arizona last Wednesday when she stopped to ask Taylor Nardo Paya, 29, a Havasupai tribe member, for directions to a gift shop. The New York City mother had briefly separated from a friend who was walking ahead of her. What began as a simple request turned violent when Paya allegedly attacked her from behind.
“I didn’t think anything of it, it was the first person that I’ve seen in the village. And I said, ‘hey, excuse me, is that the gift shop?'” Rowan recounted in an interview. She said she immediately felt uneasy during the encounter.
“And as soon as I felt my neck, I’m like, ‘oh my God, I’m going to die,'” Rowan recalled. The attack left her with a slashed neck and repeated punches to her body. Nearby Ring camera footage captured Paya attempting to drag Rowan away after she fell to the ground during the assault.
“I was like, oh my God, my neck. I can’t die like this, this is not the way,” she said. Rowan, a mother of young children, focused on survival. “And I was like, I have my kids to go home to,” she added.
After the attack, Rowan required 10 stitches in her neck and three stitches on her left hand. A woman nearby heard Rowan’s screams for help and welcomed her inside her home, providing refuge from the ongoing assault.
Rowan’s mother, Tricia Rowan, shared details of the attack on a Havasupai Falls Facebook group on Aug. 15. “This was a vicious, violent UNPROVOKED attack that almost took my daughter’s life!,” Tricia wrote.
“Taylor Paya slit her throat, punched her repeatedly, pulled her hair, threw her to the ground & tried dragging her to who knows where!,” Tricia continued in her Facebook post. “Thankfully my daughter is a warrior & FOUGHT for HER LIFE! Screaming for help & begging for her life!”
Tricia Rowan also spoke to ABC7 about the bystander who intervened. “I’m just so grateful for the woman that opened the door that heard her screams, it’s something you can never unhear,” she said. “And she’s a fighter. She fought to make sure she’s coming home to her babies and she’s my baby. So I’m so glad she made it.”
Reservation police tracked Paya down the following day by pinging Rowan’s stolen cell phone and arrested him. Because the alleged attack took place on tribal land, Paya faces a federal charge of assault with deadly weapons.
Court records show Paya has a prior violent criminal history. In December 2015, he robbed a woman outside a home where she was staying and admitted to ripping off several layers of the victim’s clothing before throwing her to the ground and punching her in the face and side. Paya pleaded guilty in September 2016 and received a five-year prison sentence, plus an order to undergo sex offender treatment and counseling.
Paya remains in custody as the federal case proceeds.