A woman assaulted in a Buckhead parking garage wants her attacker to know it takes more than five hits to the head to knock her out.
Matraya Lewis told Channel 2 Action News a man surprised her in an attempt to steal her purse as she was leaving the Target on Peachtree Road near Phipps Plaza about 7 p.m. Monday.
“It was obvious that he was stalking the parking lot,” Lewis told the news station.
By the time she made it to her car on the second floor of the parking garage, a man dressed all in black approached and demanded her purse, Lewis said.
“It was like a soft, ‘Give me your bag,’” Lewis said. “I’m like, ‘No’ and then he just jumped.”
The man knocked her to the ground and started punching her.
“I was in so much shock that it wasn’t until he was hitting me that I really kind of woke up and was like, ‘I need to get into defense mode,’” she told Channel 2.
Years of self-defense training paid off and Lewis said she kicked the man in the groin as other witnesses started to realize what was happening.
The attacker ran away before police made it to the second level of the garage.
Lewis, for her part, is satisfied for having fought him off, but wishes she could have held him until police arrived to arrest him.
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