Hope Withrow says she does not want to be a silent victim.
She survived a home invasion and a brutal attack Aug. 6.
“I woke up to a man standing over me with a gun in my face with a bandana over his nose,” she said, “Saying, ‘Get up, get up.’ Right away, he indicated he wanted to sexually assault me.”
It was a random act of violence, one that played out in Withrow’s Denver home.
“I told him he could take anything, I even tried to negotiate and reason with him, like, ‘Look, I didn’t see your face, just let me go, it will make it easier,’ ” Withrow said. “He was completely out of his mind, in terms of (being) nonnegotiable.”
Denver police say a man broke into Withrow’s house on Lafayette Street the morning of Aug. 6. Withrow said he was after her roommate’s Jeep.
Withrow said she later learned the man got in through a dog door; he first tied up her roommate, went through the roommate’s belongings and then woke her up.
“You know, it went through my head and I actually told him, ‘You’d have to kill me before you rape me,’ ” she said. “I don’t know why. I had less fear of the gun then I did being raped. There was something inside of me that said, ‘No, I don’t want to live with that.’ “
Withrow says she fought her attacker and somehow was able to get to the front door of her home and screamed for help. But the man got hold of her again and started beating her with the butt of his gun. He dragged her inside the home, tied her up and left her on the bed.
“All I knew, ‘I’ve got to get out of this tie,’ ” Withrow said. “I was able to get my foot loose. All I thought was, ‘Get to the front door.’ Like, ‘If I can get out to my neighbors, I will be safe.’ I was able to get my foot out, I just ran.”
Withrow says a neighbor brought her a blanket to cover her up, because she only had a shirt on.
The man who broke into her home eventually got away with her roommate’s Jeep, until Denver police caught up with him just a few blocks away.
Investigators say a man later identified as 33-year-old David Maestas pointed a gun at police after he crashed at East 22nd Avenue and Downing Street, and they fired, killing him.
“To hear what came of the situation was such a, I hate to say it, but relief to know I don’t need to live in fear of this man,” Withrow said.
“I say OK, take this story. If this helps anybody to reach out to their neighbors, to reach out to their friends, to take self defense, to get a security system on your house, you know, but anything not to live in that kind of fear,” she said.
Withrow is nursing a broken finger, 26 stitches and staples in her head, and bruises all over her body.
She says the Denver Police Department was awesome.
“I have never been so impressed with the police force,” she says.
