She survived a stabbing. Now her attacker is accused in a deadly cold case.

From a corner of an eye, she saw the fist speeding toward her, a flick of motion before it struck, stunning her as she stood wrapping leftovers at her kitchen counter.

Next she was on the floor, with George Mudd on top of her, stifling her screams by stabbing her twice in the neck with a needlelike tool called an awl. The wounds “came within a fraction of an inch of severing her main artery,” a D.C. police officer later wrote in a report.