UPDATE: The West Palm Beach police department says 22-year-old D'Antoine Roselle Jackson has been arrested in connection with the attempted murder and attempted robbery of a woman on Sunday, April 8, 2018 in West Palm Beach.
Police say Jackson was identified through physical evidence, which includes DNA collected from the victim's backpack.
Jackson was currently incarcerated in St. Lucie County on unrelated charges.
He will be extradited to the Palm Beach County Jail where he will face attempted murder and robbery charges.
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ORIGINAL STORY:
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- It’s Sunday. Suzanne, who wants to hide her identity until her attacker is caught, is on her bike as she normally is.
“That’s my church, just riding along the water just simply being thankful. That's it,” she said in her first ever interview since the attack.
On her rides, she’ll pass pigeons, people sleeping and others loitering. She never had an issue. They just became part of the landscape.
“He was just sitting there waiting,” she recalls.
As she approached the bridge, he jumped her.
“He just came at me. No expression nothing he didn’t say a word,” she said. “He (Suzanne simulates motion of knife stabbing with sound effect) just once. Almost in slow motion and I watched him pull it out. I said to him, I said ‘please don’t kill me.’ He just got up and took off.”
The knife reached her heart and fluid started spilling into her lungs.
“It woulda been anybody else. Just was me (that day),” she said.
Six days later she was released from the St. Mary’s Medical Center with a scar and a story to tell.
“The only thing I’ll always remember he just had no life in his face. He was so far removed from the world,” she said.
Police shared have surveillance video to help them find her attacker. She says maybe if an officer was near the bridge, the attack would have never happened.
“West Palm Beach Mayor Jeri Muoio mayor did call me you know? I mean what can you do because I know for a fact from going down there that there are people down there that they just choose to be down there,” she said.
Once she’s healthy enough to bike again, she plans on keeping her Sunday bike ride routine.
Suzanne said that her attacker was unusually thin and weak. She says if she had any sort of self-defense training, she could have fended the man off.
