‘Miracle I’m alive’: Plano hammer attack victim recalls random ambush
PLANO, Texas - A 65-year-old hammer attack victim said he was ambushed while in a convenience store restroom. The victim suffered injuries to his hands and his head.
Police said 26-year-old Charles Murray committed the attack there, and another on a DART train.
The victim was buying a lottery ticket at a gas station. He decided to use the restroom, and it was in that restroom where he was randomly attacked with a hammer.
"I took one step back, I heard the stall door open, and all of a sudden, I felt something hit me in the back of the head," the victim, Erik, recalled.
The 65-year-old man recalls randomly being repeatedly struck in the head with a hammer while using a restroom inside a RaceTrac off Coit Road in Plano Tuesday evening.
"Then it happened again, and I guess my instinct was to raise my right hand to protect myself from whatever it was, and there was another blow, and I went to the ground," he said.
Erik, who does not want FOX 4 to use his last name, said he screamed for help. The attacker then ran off.
"Couldn’t have been more than 30-45 seconds," he said. "It was ‘Bam! Bam! Bam!’"
[REPORTER: "Did he say anything to you?"]
"The only thing I remember him saying was, ‘Watch it now, watch it now,’" he said.
On Thursday, Plano PD arrested Charles Maurice Murray for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
One of Murray’s relatives saw surveillance images on FOX 4. That led to a 911 call.
"I was watching the news and I happened to call my mother and told my mother that I saw him on the news and she was like, ‘He was right here.’ So, I was like, ‘Just ask him, is he going around, you know, hitting people with hammers,’ you know? And he said he was, and he didn’t know why he did it," Monique Austin said. "He’s very unstable in the head, and he needs his help. He needs his medication."
Plano hammer attack suspect admitted he 'hurt multiple people and didn't know why,' arrest warrant says
Plano police say family members of the man responsible for a series of unprovoked attacks with a hammer turned him in because they were worried he’d hurt someone else.
DART said the 26-year-old is also expected to face a charge in a random hammer attack which seriously injured a person while riding the Orange Line as it was pulling into the Lovers Lane Station in Dallas, hours before the attack at RaceTrac.
"I consider myself to be a Christian, so you have to forgive him," Erik said.
Forgiveness, but with repercussions. Erik has two broken bones in his right hand and five staples in the back of his head where the hammer connected.
"But, you know, I’m standing here," he said.
[REPORTER: "How much worse could this have been? Do you feel fortunate to just be standing here?"]
"It’s literally a miracle I’m alive. I can’t imagine for what happened to me that this could have gone any better," Erik responded.
Murray remains in Collin County jail on a $30,000 bond.