A Missouri mother of two is recovering after a man she agreed to go out with stabbed her with a box cutter.
On June 27, 29-year-old Lara Dvorak met a man at a BP gas station off Independence Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri. The man, who police identified as 23-year-old Salam al Shimaily, asked her to go to a party with him later that night.
According to a probable cause statement, when the date was over and Dvorak tried to leave, al Shimaily reportedly stabbed her in the chest and side, then tried to slit her throat.
"I saw my two children, and I was scared for them because of how hard it would be for them if I had died. I thought I was going to die in that moment," Dvorak exclusively told 41 Action News of the attack.
She said she escaped by running through a narrow alley between two buildings. Dvorak, clutching the wound on her throat, then tried to flag down 7 or 8 cars, all of which passed her by.
"It felt absolutely awful. Not only that this happened, but that people weren't willing to help," she said, with tears in her eyes.
Eventually a man stopped and drove Dvorak back to the BP, where her now nightmare began hours earlier. She was treated for several stab wounds, including one that punctured her lung.
Police were able to track down al Shimaily by accessing Dvorak's Google Maps timeline. According to court documents, from there, detectives with the Kansas City Police Department pulled video footage capturing al Shimaily's license plate at Independence and Hardesty.
Dvorak is urging all women to make sure the feature is enabled on their phones. You can activate the timeline by enabling location services under settings in the Google Maps app.
Al Shimaily is charged with assault and armed criminal action. He'll appear in court on July 27 for a preliminary hearing.
