Tulsa Woman Survives Being Stabbed Over Purse

A Tulsa woman is recovering after a man stabbed her while demanding her purse.

Like so many victims she never thought anything like that would happen to her, and to make matters worse, the man who attacked her is still out there.

Tedara takes care of her 4-year-old son during the day and goes to nursing school in the evening and her husband is trying to become a firefighter.

She's an average wife and mother with an amazing story of survival that came about while doing something as mundane as picking up sandwiches.

"As soon as I came out the door, he was right on me. ‘Give me your purse,' stab. I said, ‘oh my gosh you don't have to stab me.' I pleaded with him, ‘do not kill me, do not kill me. I have nothing. I have nothing in my purse,'" she recalled.

Tedara just left nursing school and went into a Subway at 31st and Garnett to pick up sandwiches to take home.

She got her order, left, and that's when it happened.

Video shows a blur outside the doors before Tedara stumbles back in, bleeding badly from her stomach.

After she begged the man not to kill her, they struggled and the robber cut her a second time. This time he went through her stomach wall, her colon and her small intestines. She was losing a lot of blood, fast.

As the Subway employees frantically called 911, Tedara did something that seems to make no sense.

Rather than wait for the ambulance, in her shock and acting on adrenalin and instinct, she got into her car, stuffed a shirt into her wound and drove the four miles to her house.

“Only thing I was thinking to myself, ‘if I die, I want to die in my home. I want to die telling my son I love him. I want to hug my husband for the last time,'" she said.

She said she wasn't going to be some anonymous chalk outline on a sidewalk, some unnamed murder victim. She wanted someone to know what happened to her and wanted her family to know they mattered.

"I come from the streets of Brooklyn, I came from nothing and I work hard for what I have, for my family, to let me die here," Tedara said.

She had immediate, lifesaving surgery that took 300 stitches and 50 staples to repair the damage.

She still can't believe it happened. She would've given up her purse had the man just asked, but he was so violent, so fast.

"I only had $8 and I pleaded with him, ‘I don't have no money,'" she said.

Now, she's facing thousands of dollars in medical bills, had to take time off from her nursing classes and can't even play with her son.

Friends are doing all they can to help by creating a Go Fund Me account online to try to help.

Tedara said she is thankful to be alive and knows she will heal from her physical wounds, although she will have a terrible scar to always remind her.

She said what's going to take a lot longer is healing emotionally and getting over the fear she now feels all the time.

If anyone saw this happen March 6th or knows who did it, call police.

She believes he may very well kill his next victim.