It Could Have Been Me: Donna Ongsiako

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Before we begin, just to trigger warning, the following episode does include mentions of graphic physical violence.

I survived a violent home invasion.

After everything was said and done,

it was, I lost, in total, close to three-quarters of the blood in my body.

There's no earthly reason why I'm alive.

None.

There is none.

As you heard, that is Donna Ungshako, who miraculously survived a random attack in her Colts Neck, New Jersey home back in the early morning hours of July 7th, 2013.

Donna lived with her 21-year-old daughter, but she was home alone that night.

And after opening her front door to let her cat back in the house, Donna then encountered an intruder attempting to cut through the screen of the window by her front door.

He proceeded to stab her multiple times on her face and in her chest before leaving with her purse and her car keys.

As Donna lay on the floor bleeding, she somehow found the strength to crawl upstairs where her cell phone was, and she called 911 while her attacker then escaped in her car.

Okay, okay, okay.

Just stand up on me, okay?

Where did you get stabbed?

In the next blood, it's cushing out and in the chest.

Okay.

I think it's my heart.

I'm pouring gushing blood.

Then before briefly losing consciousness, she was able to describe her attacker in great detail.

detail he was probably about 17 white

real skinny curly hair

blonde dirty blonde hair

a little bit long hair in the backpack i'm losing consciousness okay so stay with me okay yeah i could feel the water's just the blood is just water it's like water After paramedics arrived, Donna then was rushed to the hospital.

And as you heard her say, she lost close to three quarters of the blood in her body.

But thanks to Donna's detailed description of her attacker and additional tips and DNA evidence, police identified 16-year-old Brennan Doyle as a suspect.

He was arrested nearly four months after stabbing Donna.

And Doyle claimed he was under the influence at the time of magic mushrooms.

In 2015, Doyle pleaded guilty to attempted murder and carjacking, and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

And while Doyle is in prison, Donna is still struggling to recover from the trauma of her attack.

I'm Natalie Morales of 48 Hours, and this is It Could Have Been Me.

Welcome, Donna.

It is so good to have you here with us, and thank you so much for being willing to share your story with us.

Thank you for having me.

I know what you went through was so...

traumatic physically, emotionally.

How are you doing today?

Physically, all of my injuries have healed.

I have some, you know, nerve damage, pins and needles in my left arm.

But other than that, physically, I'm okay.

You know, psychologically,

I'm still working on that.

I can go places by myself now.

But do I like being in the dark, in the night, by myself?

No, still, it

is.

It is difficult for me.

Your physical scars have healed so beautifully as well.

You don't don't see them as much anymore.

But as you said, the emotional trauma is still something that you live with.

And

I know that has to be so difficult to go through, as you said, the nighttime and the darkness, because that's when the attack happened.

You've moved out of that house, though.

And

I know that area of New Jersey.

I lived in New Jersey for many, many years.

It's a beautiful, peaceful area, horse country.

Something like this, though, you never expect something like this to happen in Colts Neck, New Jersey, right?

No, never.

I felt very safe there.

Never in my wildest nightmares would I would think this would happen there.

Take me back to that night.

Your daughter, Kirsten, she was out at a party.

You nodded off, but then you went to open the door to let your cat back in.

What happened then?

Right.

So when I opened the door, I saw...

a kid standing on the porch.

That's what I zoned in on.

And then like a millisecond later, I saw the knife that he had and he was cutting into the screen and the window.

And my response kicked into, oh, I got to shut this door, you know.

So as I was shutting the door, he charged at the door and the knife, it stuck through just a tiny little opening

before I could actually shut the door.

And it cut my finger, the tip of my finger.

And I pulled my hand off the door.

You know, that was like, that was the most painful moment

was that knife cutting the tip of my finger

because my body hadn't shut down yet.

At that point, it was just sliced into my hand.

So when I pulled my hand off the door, he pushed the door in and was face to face with me in my kitchen.

I could not

think far enough ahead to say he's going to cut me with that knife.

But sure enough, he was standing just straight in front of me and he just started slashing me.

My face, you could see this part here, but it actually goes all the way back here.

So he just took the knife and, you know,

slashed that way.

And I could not

process again that he would actually cut me.

So I'm holding my

face like this and he's slashing my neck.

You know, and then so now I'm like, oh, you know, like, what's happening, what's happening?

And he stabbed me straight into my chest.

And still,

even with the slot, you know, the slashes and the stabs, I couldn't process that he was actually like another stab was going to come, another slash was going to come.

Like I couldn't process that.

Gosh, it is unreal hearing you describe all of this.

And it's still.

So clear as day to you in your memory.

I can see that.

Oh, yeah.

I'm sure that's so hard to relive that moment, the pain you were feeling in that moment.

And as I understand, this is, this is a young man that you'd never seen him before.

It's not somebody you recognized, right?

Right.

Totally random.

You saw, though, he seemed to be young.

You got a good feel for what he looked like.

I mean, you were staring at him as he's doing this to you.

You wouldn't take your eyes off him.

Absolutely.

Correct.

Yep.

Without a doubt.

So he's attacking you multiple times.

He stabbed you at this point.

In that time, what's going through your head?

Are your survival instincts kicking in?

Yes, I saw, well, I started to think, you know, I have to get that knife, like I have to get it out of his hands.

So as I was backing away from him, I tried to grab the knife from him.

You know,

I, you know, in my head, I'm going to grab that knife and I'm going to get it away from him.

But

it literally just cut my hand open.

I ended up on the floor, you know, and he came over to me on the floor.

He asked me for my car keys and for a lighter.

So I directed him to that, to my purse, and

he went through my purse and got what he needed.

And I know that you were wanting to figure out, get to your cell phone, right?

That was part of the whole thinking at that moment.

Yeah, my cell phone was upstairs.

Once he left with the car keys, the lighter, that was your opportunity.

You had to get upstairs.

How'd you do that?

I mean, in the condition you were in.

I have no idea.

I have no idea.

I always say that there was definitely divine intervention that helped me get up and get up the stairs.

And I feel like I floated up those stairs and to my phone.

Almost like an out-of-body experience, really.

Yes.

Yes, absolutely.

And I know part of your motivation was your daughter.

She was out, but you knew she would come back.

You knew she would find you.

I could just imagine Kirsten coming in, you know, walking in through that door and finding me laying there.

And that couldn't happen.

That just

wasn't something I was prepared to let happen.

You got to your phone, yet incredibly, you were still with it enough to look outside and notice that your attacker was still there in the car.

So you had to be really careful once you got your phone, right?

What did you do?

Yes, I picked up my phone and it was still on the, attached to the cord.

And

I knew that if I unplugged the cord from it, it was going to light up and he would see like that light in the dark.

And I was so terrified that he was going to see that and he was going to come back in.

And so I kind of just, you know, slunk down to the floor with it and tried to be as careful as I could.

And it was hard just trying to swipe on the phone just to unlock it because I had so much blood on my hands.

Finally, I just wiped it off on the side of the bed and was able to dial 911.

Do you remember that call at all now?

I remember feeling so panicked, just desperate and trying to get all of the right information out, all the right words out.

After the criminal trial was done, I went back to the prosecutor's office and I asked them if I could hear my 911 call.

because I wanted to make sure, like, did I actually speak clearly?

Did I actually give them all this information like they said I did?

And that was really empowering for me to go back years later and hear that recording.

You give me goosebumps, you know, just imagining you hearing that for the first time after having gone through what you went through.

You made it out of that house incredible.

And then you had to undergo seven hours of surgery.

When you're in the hospital, is it true that you were worried that your attacker might come back for you?

Oh, yeah, without a doubt.

You know, in every scary movie that you see or every, you know, type of slasher movie like that, you see the killer comes back dressed as a doctor, dressed as a nurse, or they slip in,

you know, as an orderly or something like that.

But I kept telling them, you know, like,

is there a guard out, you know, asking them, is there a guard outside my door?

You know, and they kept trying to assure me that it was a secure floor.

I was under an alias.

Nobody was getting on this floor into my room unless they knew my alias.

Yeah, absolutely terrified.

Your alias was Sarah Reese.

Yeah, it was shocking actually to see that on my wristband.

I know you described feeling like you almost lost your identity because the attack, it's like it took so much away from you.

I

completely do not identify with who I was pre-attack.

I feel like there is not a stitch of me left from, you know, before the attack.

You're a different person now.

Totally different person.

And I'm still trying to figure out

who that is.

It's obviously a work in progress, but you're so strong and

you see you're such a survivor.

I know your friend Sharon Sharp was really important to helping you go through your recovery.

She described seeing you in the hospital those very first few days and the stab wounds and you know how much blood even was in your hair at that moment.

And she talked about that.

Let's take a listen here.

Her beautiful long hair was just caked.

I mean caked.

It was almost like it was almost like a thing you could pick up in blood.

And all she'd say was, I want my hair washed.

I want my hair washed.

Everybody could smell it.

You couldn't not smell it.

It was horrible.

It was horrible.

And I love that in that moment, your friends saw what you needed and they took action.

They washed your hair.

They tried to be strong for you when you needed that.

The washing of the blood out of my hair, that for me was so, it was almost ceremonial.

That was a lingering

ick factor for me was that smell, that smell of blood.

I just couldn't shake it.

Well, it was, it was just four days later that you were able to leave the hospital and i mean i think you had something like 37 stitches am i right and 38 staples throughout your body yeah i think they would have kept me there longer but every day i was like i'm ready to go i have to leave i did not feel safe there at all And of course, you didn't feel safe going back to the house.

So you didn't go back there.

Where did you end up going?

Yeah, so I ended up going back to my parents' house.

So it was my mother and my father and a brother that lived there.

And my sister lived there at the time with her three children.

So there was no room at the inn for me.

So they ended up just kind of putting me in my niece's room.

It was chaos.

Well, and I know you were concerned because your attacker was still out there and it would take four months before 16-year-old Brennan Doyle was then arrested.

And, you know, your attacker, we said he was young.

What was your reaction, though, when you heard?

I mean, he was just 16 years old.

I mean, I stood face to face with him.

So I saw him and I knew he was young.

I didn't realize he was that young.

Um,

and kind of shocked because I was in really good shape physically.

And if you said a 16-year-old was going to, you know, force their way into your house and attack you, I would have said, absolutely not.

That is not going to happen.

I was in the best shape of my life.

There was no way that that was going to happen.

But

fight, flight, or freeze.

And I froze.

Yeah.

He was then charged as an adult.

When you heard what Brennan Doyle was alleging, he said it was magic mushrooms that possessed him to do what he did to you.

What did you make of that?

Yeah, I thought that was just a cop-out.

He seemed very present and very

sure of what he was doing.

So I don't buy the whole

hallucinogenic hallucinogenic

story.

Did you see him in court?

Yes.

I went to every single court appearance.

There were throughout the

two years between the time, the attack and then the actual trial in 2015.

I went to every single appearance, even if it was just like a 10-minute, like, this is what's happening thing, because I wanted him to see me.

I wanted him to know that I was alive and

I was showing up, you know.

And he pleaded guilty to attempted murder and carjacking.

That was in 2015, then sentenced to 15 years in prison.

What was your reaction when you heard that sentence?

If we were to go to trial, I was told that he can maintain his innocence and there would be no guarantee of him,

of the amount of time that he would get

if we went to trial.

He could get four years, he could get, you know, seven years, what have you.

But if he takes the plea deal, they told me he has to admit his guilt to the court.

So when they said he's going to take a plea deal for 15 years,

I wanted that as opposed to taking a chance that he could get four years and maintain his innocence.

So there was a civil award after the criminal trial where I was awarded $5 million.

I have not seen any money from that.

He could be coming out soon, you know, in a couple of years.

Have you come to the terms with the fact that he might be released?

I have not come to terms with that.

I am,

I have to work on that.

I feel like he's not going to come out and come after me, but, you know, you never know.

There's that little part of me that you're not going to convince that he doesn't want to hurt or harm me.

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You know,

it's hard to even ask the question, but what does closure look like for you?

I mean, especially when you talk about this was such a random act of violence.

Yeah.

You know,

hindsight is 2020.

So

looking back on how I came out of the hospital and everything was so chaotic and everybody was so traumatized.

Nobody knew what to do.

Looking back now,

had I been received into an environment

that had created a safe environment for me, that is what I needed.

Like I needed that foundation.

I still need it.

the foundation of safety.

I have to figure out: can I live in a standalone house by myself?

Or do I have to always live in an apartment with other people around or a condo or, you know, something with other people around?

You know?

And I think what you're doing now is so remarkable because you're trying to help people understand

what it means to be a victim of a random attack and

the emotions, you know, the post-traumatic stress that goes along with all of that when it comes to healing.

Yeah.

Well,

when,

well, first of all, I didn't think

maybe the first couple of days when I was out of the hospital, I didn't think that I had post-traumatic stress.

Like, I didn't, I was just like, you know, this is a hard, you know, a violent, horrible thing.

And

I'm going to calm down and things will be okay.

I followed the steps of like what I was supposed to do, followed doctor's orders and things like that.

It wasn't until things started happening to me

that

it really set in, like the nightmares and the not sleeping and

I couldn't be around people and the isolating and the

emotions up and down.

Like I could be sitting here just like this and all of a sudden I wouldn't be crying, but tears would be pouring out of me.

I had all this trauma inside me and it had to be released somehow.

Right.

And Donna, what are you doing now to help, you know, get through this?

I mean, it's still, it seems like it's very emotionally traumatic still to this day.

Yes.

So I still am in therapy.

I was on anti-anxiety medications.

I was on medication, whatever the doctors thought that I should be on, I followed their protocol.

I also.

uh started to do yoga and meditation and aromatherapy anything calming mind, body, soul type calming things.

To help you heal, though, I know that you created a support group specifically focused on victims of random attacks.

Why was that important to you?

You know, nobody could put together the

that random act.

Nobody could put together that I was alone in the night, in the dark, and

barely escaped death.

I knew I needed to talk to somebody else and hear their experience, I guess, more for hope, right?

Let me, I want to hear from somebody who got to the other side of this, who survived it and is doing well and is thriving and, you know, has all these ways of coping.

So I just wanted, with the support group, I wanted to be able to be a safe place for somebody else to tell their story,

you know, hold space for somebody else.

I heard you saying that you have the same job and that you had before the attack, that they've been very supportive and helpful.

Yes, yeah.

Thank you so much for pointing that out because

having my job to go back to and having a purpose to get up and get out of bed and

go to work every day, that was so important.

It's the one thing that has not changed since the attack.

It's the one constant.

And what do you want people to know about victims of random attacks?

How do we talk to people who've gone through what you've gone through in a way that doesn't also, you know, become triggering.

I think you really have to meet people where they are.

And

in

hearing somebody talk about whatever they're experiencing or whatever they're going through, you don't have to fix it.

You don't have to offer advice.

Just listen, you know, just

let them release that

without judgment.

I know before the attack, you competed in tough mutters.

And,

you know, as you said, you were in the best shape of your life back then.

I think, though, what got you through this is you're the toughest mother.

I'm amazed again how you got up those stairs.

You called 911.

You gave that description.

It really all came from a place of love, knowing that you needed to protect your daughter.

How are you and Kirsten doing today?

Yeah, she's doing well.

She's building a life

of her own with her husband.

There's still that, there's like a wedge there from the attack.

I feel like there's always something in my everyday life that relates to the attack or something from the attack.

And I feel like I don't want to put that on her because that then

causes her to think about it.

And then, you know,

So there's a wedge there where I kind of try to protect her from my stuff and she kind of tries to protect me from any of her stuff.

And it's not the healthiest thing, but we're going to get through it.

I know you will.

And I know it has to be so hard.

I mean, you both have been through so much.

So it's, it's understandable how, you know, in trying to protect one another, you end up sometimes putting, you know, blocks in the way in the path of allowing you to have, you know, a really open and honest conversation.

But you'll get there.

You'll get there because the work you're doing is amazing and sharing your story, helping others is helping you.

And I can see that.

So Donna, you're, you're incredible.

And it's such a privilege to get to know you.

And I know it wasn't easy having a conversation again about what happened to you, but we so appreciate you sharing it because perhaps in helping us understand how best to talk to victims of random attacks, you're creating an opportunity as well to let us just understand

people going through traumatic experiences as a whole.

Thank you so much.

We want to thank you for listening to It Could Have Been Me.

I'm Natalie Morales, and you can always find your latest podcast in the 48 Hours podcast feed.

It's free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.