HollyMatkinSeattle, WA – The daughter of a retired police officer wasn’t about to become a victim when she was attacked by a machete-wielding man in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day.
“I realized, ‘This is it. It’s going down. I’m going to kick this guy’s ass,’ ” 27-year-old Lillian Germond told The Seattle Times.
Germond said she had just finished her shift at an eatery and parked her vehicle about a block from her apartment at approximately 3:30 a.m., when she noticed a man behind her who seemed to be closing the distance between them as she walked to her building.
Thinking he may be another resident in the apartment complex, Germond said she held the front key-coded door open for the man.
“I thought it was one of my neighbors and was about to try and get my key out when this guy came straight for me and I realized he had a machete,” Germond said. “I backed up against my [apartment’s] front door and he said, ‘Don’t [expletive] move.’ “
Germond offered the assailant her bag, but she said he didn’t want it.
Instead, he raised his weapon and grabbed her by the throat.
“Don’t [expletive] move,” he told her again.
But her attacker, later identified as 21-year-old Steven Jahn, made a mistake when he thought that the petite Germond would be easy prey.
She was a cop’s daughter – and he made her take taekwondo lessons for a decade.
“OK, here we go,” she said to herself, according to The Seattle Times. “It’s either fight or die.”
Germond dropped her bag and grasped the machete blade, slicing her hand.
She screamed for her boyfriend, Chauncey Arkfeld, who was in their shared apartment.
“I heard her being shoved against our door, and screaming,” Arkfeld said in a Facebook post. “In a panic, I leapt up from the couch, and opened the door to see her being dragged out of our apartment building at knifepoint.”
When Jahn heard Arkfeld heading out to help, he tried to get away from Germond, but she wasn’t finished with him yet.
He was now the prey, she told The Seattle Times.
Germond grasped the back of Jahn’s coat and forced him into a headlock as the pair fell out of the front door of the complex and down the stairs.
Jahn resorted to biting Germond in an attempt to escape, as she continued to pummel him.
“I didn’t want him to do this to someone else,” she told The Seattle Times.
“I saw Lilly and some man wrestling in the bushes with a machete. I rushed in, and we (mostly Lilly) subdued him…” Arkfeld said in his post.
He fought with Jahn as Germond took his machete away.
She then beat her attacker with a broken table leg that she found near the front steps of the building, The Seattle Times reported.
“He was a coward,” Arkfeld told The Seattle Times. “He was like, ‘Please stop hitting me. This was my first time doing this.’”
By that time, the ruckus had roused the neighborhood, and police were on their way.
“Our neighbors and property manager came quickly, followed by the police, who were professional and courteous,” Arkfeld wrote. “By 4:30, we were back at the crime scene (our front door). This is where we learned that he had left behind a roll of duct tape. This guy followed my girlfriend from her car with a machete and duct tape. Think about that for a second.”
A second knife was also found at the scene, The Seattle Times reported.
Jahn was arrested for felony second-degree assault and fourth-degree assault.
Germond and Arkfeld sustained cuts and bruises over much of their bodies, but will be fine.
“I’m almost in tears when I talk about her, not because I’m sad but because I’m proud,” Germond’s father, a former State of California tactical commander told The Seattle Times. “She’s a warrior woman and she’s trained all her life to do this. And I want other girls and other daughters to hear early training is good, self-defense is good.”
“I hope to remind you that no matter what kind of a nice neighborhood you live in, there are f**ked up people in every pocket of this world, including at your own front door,” Arkfeld said in his Facebook post.
Jahn was being held on $100,000 bond at the King County Jail.
His arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 18.