When Cora Williams dreams now, she sees her ex-boyfriend”s eyes as he repeatedly stabs her body with a dull butcher knife, she said.
She”s reliving Thursday evening, when 45-year-old Nathaniel “Nate” Bankhead allegedly stabbed or cut her more than 20 times in the face, chest, stomach and arms.
Williams, 31, went with Bankhead that day to 332 E. Plum St. in Lowndes County — the house she rents that he and his family live in — to talk about his recent violent behavior following a breakup, she said.
“He said, I”ve got something to show you,” then went out the carport door while Williams waited, she said. When he returned, he had the knife and “just started stabbing me.”
“I was thinking he was going to kill me, then I stopped saying he was going to kill me and started praying,” she said.
Although she tried to fight him off, shielding herself with her right forearm and hand, she eventually just counted the times he stabbed her, coming up with at least 33 times, she said.
“I lost track of how many times I was stabbed,” she added. “The doctor said he stopped counting after 20 something times.”
By the time Bankhead”s father and another of his relatives pulled him off, there were “pools of blood” in the living room, hallway and bathroom, she said.
She suffered a puntured lung, damaged nerves in her right hand, and lost much of her blood. After two surgeries at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle, she emerged with 41 stitches and 29 staples to different parts of her body.
“Through it all, I never lost my spirit,” she said. “I talked the whole time, joked around.”
Meanwhile, Bankhead — who initially fled the scene — turned himself in to the Lowndes County Sheriff”s Office on Friday and was charged with aggravated assault with a weapon. His bond was set at $250,000.
Despite the incident, she said she”d already forgiven him.
“I don”t think he was himself,” she continued. “I don”t know what was going on or what happened, but he wasn”t himself. I looked in his eyes and it wasn”t what I used to see.”
Now that she”s out of the hospital, Williams feels like she”s been given a second chance at life.
“It just wasn”t my time, apparently,” she said. “(God”s) got other plans for me.”
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