An Oklahoma woman who allegedly survived a beheading attempt by a disgruntled former co-worker told jurors a harrowing tale of survival at the suspect’s trial for the alleged attack and the decapitation killing of another woman, according to multiple reports.
“He wouldn’t stop,” Traci Johnson, 46, testified Monday, according to the Tulsa World. “He was just going back and forth like he was cutting a piece of meat.”
Johnson told the jury her attacker was 33-year-old Alton Alexander Nolen, a disgruntled Vaughan Foods employee accused of the decapitation murder of co-worker Colleen Hufford and attacking Johnson at the Moore, Oklahoma food plant on Sept. 25, 2014.
Nolen has pleaded not guilty. His trial began last week and so far prosecutors have called more than 20 witnesses, including Johnson.
“I didn’t know what to do or think,” Johnson said. “I was trying to get him off of me, and he wouldn’t get off.”
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Johnson, who had just started working at the plant four days earlier, said she was changing in the locker room when she heard “bloody murder screaming,” according to News9. She said she saw Hufford injured and was planning to help her when she saw Nolen.
“When I saw the defendant, I was frozen,” she testified. “I couldn’t move. And I saw the knife with the blood on the knife and he made a mad dash toward me and pushed me up against the wall and held me up with his forearm against the wall and just started splicing my neck.”
Johnson sustained damage to her jugular veins and to her face and fingers.
Nolen was finally apprehended after he was shot by an Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office Reserve Deputy.
On Wednesday, prosecutors played a tape of detectives questioning Nolen after the incident. In the tape, Nolen, who said he felt “oppressed,” allegedly admitted to beheading Hufford and assaulting Johnson after grabbing a knife from his home, KFOR reports.
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Johnson had allegedly talked to supervisors after she had an issue at the plant with Nolen earlier that day. He was suspended after that, according to KFOR.
Asked why he attacked the two women, Nolen responded: “He want us to get the oppressors out of this place.”
Nolen’s coworker Jeremy Hartman testified that he witnessed the altercation between Johnson and Nolen that led to his suspension.
“I could hear him say, ‘I beat Caucasians,'” he alleged, according to News9.
Nolen’s supervisor, Tim Bluford, told the jury he witnessed the alleged attempted decapitation of Johnson and tried to stop him by throwing a roll of labels at him.
Testimony from the trial is expected to conclude Wednesday.