When 15-year-old Mary Vincent was left alone and badly injured in California in 1978, she had every reason to believe she was going to die. Instead, she found a way to keep herself alive.
Vincent had been hitchhiking when she accepted a ride from Lawrence Singleton. She was trying to get to her grandfather’s home after leaving an abusive situation when Singleton picked her up in his blue van. The ride soon turned into a nightmare.
Singleton drove Vincent away from the main road before attacking her. He struck her with a metal hammer, stripped her and tied her up before sexually assaulting her for hours.
When the assault was over, the attack became even more horrific. Singleton used a hatchet to cut off both of Vincent’s arms before throwing her down a ravine and leaving her there. But Vincent was still alive.
“I had to stop the bleeding”
And she knew she had to do something quickly to stop herself from bleeding to death.
Years later, Vincent described the moments after the attack on the YouTube series What It Was Like.
“I had to stop the bleeding from my arms because I’m moving now and my blood is leaking, and I only have so much blood in my body,” she said, according to LADbible.
“So I stuck my arms in the dirt and packed it. It acted like mud because it got gelled with the blood, but it stopped me from bleeding.”
The improvised method helped her survive long enough to find help.
Vincent then began walking. She covered roughly four miles before encountering people who might have been able to help her. But when they saw her, they drove away.
The first people who saw her drove off
Vincent later remembered seeing a red sports car carrying two men wearing cowboy hats.
“The first people that stopped were in a red sports car and they had cowboy hats on,” she recalled. “One had a white felt cowboy hat on and the other had a straw cowboy hat; I’ll never forget their faces and they’ll never forget mine.
“I’m all naked, covered in blood, but I have no hands,” she said.
“I look like something out of one of those horror movies and those two guys freaked out. You could see the tyre marks because they peeled out so fast, and I said, ‘Please!’ when I asked them to help me, and they left.”
For Vincent, the thought of continuing on was overwhelming.
“Oh God, do I still have to keep walking?” she remembered thinking.
She finally got help
A short time later, another vehicle approached. “Just a few minutes later, a beat-up pickup truck comes pulling in. I told God, ‘OK, I asked nicely the first time for somebody to help me, and I said please. This time, they’re gonna help me or not, they’re gonna have to run me over!’”
She stood directly in the vehicle’s path and screamed for help.
“The guy came out running real fast and picked me up, and his wife opened the passenger door,” she continued.
“They were just trying to keep me awake and keep me talking, and all I could think of was: I don’t feel very well, I want to go to sleep.”
Vincent survived the attack and later helped authorities identify Singleton.
Singleton’s sentence
Singleton was eventually convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison. He ultimately served about eight years before being released on parole.
A few years later, in 1998, he was convicted of killing 31-year-old Roxanne Hayes. He was sentenced to death, but he died of cancer in prison in 2001 before the execution could take place.
Speaking to UPI after his later conviction, Vincent said she was devastated “because it had to happen again before anyone realised he shouldn’t have been released in the first place”.
Vincent went on to marry and have two sons. She has also used her experience to advocate for changes to laws and legal loopholes that can allow violent offenders to receive lighter sentences or return to society.
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