Trigger warning: This article contains descriptions of sexual assault
Kimberly Tejada’s life changed radically after an attack at the hands of the person she considered the love of her life on the morning of July 19, 2019.
She says her boyfriend, Brian Cruz, began striking her with a hammer while she slept in the home they shared in Glendale, Los Angeles.
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“My mum said she heard screaming, like if someone was trying to kill me,” Tejada recounts.
“Her room was just next to ours, she went into the room and saw what was happening.”
Her mother said she witnessed Cruz attacking Tejada. She stepped in, trying to defend her, but ended up with a head wound. He then fled, leaving the weapon behind.
Tejada survived the attack with severe injuries to her head, including a fractured skull and facial bones. The young woman, who was 24 at the time of the attack, admits that she remembers little of that fateful day.
“As it was explained to me, I covered my face with my hands in order to protect myself,” said Tejada, who also suffered the fracturing of eight of her fingers.
As she called 911, Tejada could no longer open her eyes or move. Despite struggling to breathe and stay awake, she made the effort to talk to the operator, giving them Cruz’s description and that of the car in which he fled.
“I still wonder, how I could have picked up the phone if all of my fingers were broken,” Tejada said.
“How could I talk if my jaw was broken?”
She never imagined her boyfriend, with whom she had been with since she was 13, could betray her in such a brutal way, especially since, according to her, he had never been violent.
“I thought he was the love of my life,” Tejada said.
Kimberly Tejada was the victim of a brutal hammer attack at the hands of her since-deceased fiancé.
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