Woman raped and burnt alive in horrific ordeal that left her with no fingers shares her incredible bid for survival… and new baby joy
April Sykes was a student when she was brutally assaulted by a friend who left her for dead in their home town of Paris, Tennessee
A WOMAN who was raped and burnt alive in a horrific ordeal that left her with no fingers has shared her incredible bid for survival and new baby joy.
April Sykes was brutally assaulted by a friend who left her for dead in their home town of Paris, Tennessee in November 2005. The attack destroyed her and she struggled to find the will to carry on.
Now 29, April has managed to turn her life around, with the help of fiancée Chris Page, 33, and is a proud mum to toddler son, Jonah.
She said: “After the attack, I thought my life was over. It was a miracle I survived and I knew I would never be the same girl.
“I was disfigured from the fire and my injuries led to my right arm being amputated below my elbow and I lost the fingers in my left hand.
“Yet I pulled myself out of a dark place and I never gave up. Then I met my fiancée Chris and we had our son – they give me so much strength.”
It was 5 November 2005 and April, then 18, had just finished her shift at a pizza shop.
Her friend Brandon McMinn picked her up so that they could go and spend some time together, while mutual pal Virgil Samuels was in the back of the car.
The three of them drove around the streets for a while until suddenly Virgil grabbed Brandon around the neck and pulled him to the back seat.
Recalling the incident, she said: “At first I thought it was a joke but then I caught sight of Brandon choking, so I screamed to him to let him go.
“Virgil grabbed me by the hair and ordered me to pull into the dark cemetery. As soon as I had parked up, I opened the door and ran.”
Virgil caught up with April and dragged her back to the car by her long blonde hair.
He drove off again before pulling over at the side of the road and locking Brandon in the boot.
“It felt like one minute he was my friend, the next he was the devil,” recalled April.
“He raped me four times, he committed an act of sodonomy and he choked me unconscious.
“While I was being raped, it was like I wasn’t really there, as though I was outside myself looking onto someone else being abused. It was my way of dealing with it."
Virgil drove to some nearby woods where he raped her again and tried to run her over before stabbing her with a screwdriver.
“I pretended to be dead but he hoisted me into the boot, doused me in petrol, set me on fire and then he locked me in there! Brandon had somehow escaped so I was on my own,” she said.
“I was being burned alive but I managed to open the boot and escape.”
Still burning, April staggered into the road where a man pulled over and called an ambulance.
April taken to a specialist burns unit in the Regional Medical Centre in Memphis where she was in so much pain, she thought she might die.
Her body was burned from her ankles to her thighs, and on her stomach, arms and face. She had burns over 65 per cent of her body.
April had 19 different surgeries for skin grafts from her ankles to her hips. Sadly, her right arm had to be amputated to just below her elbow and surgeons had to remove all of the fingers from her left hand.
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But, incredibly, she was able to nod her head when asked if Virgil had attacked her.
She said: “My recovery was slow and for three months I chose not to look at myself in the mirror.
“But each day I took one more step towards recovery and after six months, I went home.”
Virgil went on the run but he eventually turned himself into the police.
In June 2007, he pleaded guilty to especially aggravated kidnapping, attempted first degree murder and aggravated rape. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Knowing he was locked away for a very long time helped April get on with her life but it wasn’t until she met Chris in March 2014 that she fell in love.
He showed her around an apartment she wanted to rent and they hit it off.
In November of that year, April found out that she was pregnant. It was a moment she had never thought could happen to her.
She said: “Chris was so happy. I was so shocked we did four tests and I think we both cried! It was nerve racking and exciting at the same time!
“But my pregnancy was so easy and after a healthy pregnancy, our baby boy Jonah was born on 31 July 2015.
“Chris was there when he was born and we both wept. After everything I had been through, meeting Chris and having his child was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
“I have adapted myself to cope with Jonah because of course I am limited. I have my own way of carrying him and picking him up and now he’s bigger, I’m not afraid to hold him.
“I’ve learned that a person isn’t defined by what has happened to them. In the end I chose life.”
Meanwhile, Katie Piper has branded Halloween make-up, which shows off fake injuries and burns, offensive.
The 33-year-old was left with permanent scars after her ex boyfriend ordered someone to throw acid in her face.