(NewsNation) — Good Samaritans Clay and Ralph Grayson rescued Tessa Trotter after she was stabbed and set on fire, allegedly by her husband Zachary Mowel, according to Tennessee authorities.
Trotter’s sister Tori Trotter wrote on a GoFundMe, which was started to offset medical bills, that the attack occurred in front of the couple’s young children, who were “watching and pleading for their dad to not kill their mom.”
The Graysons, who happened to be in the neighborhood when the fire started, joined NewsNation’s “Banfield” on Wednesday to recount how they pulled Trotter to safety.
Clay said that before rescuing Trotter, he couldn’t see anything through the smoke coming from the house, so he yelled out and found her in a “pool of blood.”
“She just kept saying, ‘I don’t want to die,'” Clay Grayson said. Mowel, Trotter’s husband, then “stepped over her body” and asked if his wife was still alive, according to Grayson.
“All I remember thinking is, ‘I need to get away from this fella,'” Clay Grayson said.
The GoFundMe page states that Tessa was paralyzed from the waist down and suffered third-degree burns. All of her ribs were broken, and she had nine stab wounds.