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Survival is a basic human instinct that governs every fiber of our being. Sometimes that instinct is put to the test, as it was for the people featured in Lifetime’s new series “I Survived.”
According to the network’s website, the show “presents chilling first-person accounts from people who overcame deadly situations, allowing the survivors to describe the events as they unfolded and how they made it out alive.”
Although every story will leave viewers with goosebumps, these are some of the most chilling stories from the television show, “I Survived.”
These stories contain highly sensitive material featuring violence and sexual assault.
Mary Vincent was mutilated and pushed off a 30-foot cliff.
PunkToad/Flickr
In one of the most talked about episodes, Mary Vincent recounts her hitchhiking experience gone horribly wrong. As a 15-year-old, she was picked up on the side of the road in California by truck driver Larry Singleton. He stripped her and sexually assaulted her in the back of the truck.
When she asked to be set free, he replied “You want to be set free, I’ll set you free,” before slicing off her arm, right above the elbow. She began to fight back, so he cut off her other arm, which held onto him for another moment, in protest. Singleton then tossed her nude body off a 30-foot cliff.
Vincent put her elbows in mud to stop the bleeding, and then hiked up the cliff to the highway. She was eventually picked by a couple on their honeymoon. She was taken to hospital by helicopter and survived the ordeal to make art and advocate for victims of violence.
Her perpetrator was paroled after just over eight years, according to the LA Times.
Teri Jendusa-Nicolai was left tied up in a trash can for 3 days.
Flickr / Fabricio Zuardi
On January 31, 2001 — the third anniversary of her divorce — Teri Jendusa-Nicolai arrived at his home to pick up her two daughters. She was invited in on the pretense that her daughters were hiding, but when she stepped inside, her ex-husband David Larsen began to beat her with a baseball bat.
He then duct-taped Jendusa-Nicolai’s hands, feet, and mouth, and placed her into a trash can head first. Before she righted herself, Larsen filled up the trash can with snow and put it into his truck.
Jendusa-Nicolai remembered her cell phone and dialed 911 without being able to see the screen. She yelled Larsen’s address into the phone, but police initially thought it was a prank. Larsen dropped her off in his storage unit, where Jendusa-Nicolai waited for three days before the paramedics found her.
She lost her toes to frostbite, but survived despite doctors saying she only had an hour left to live upon arrival.
Jennifer Holliday talked her way out of a killer’s grasp.
Flickr/Sarah McDevitt
Jennifer Holliday was driving her 18-year-old cousin Anna Franklin at night when she was shot in the arm. After pulling over, Eric Parnell followed the two and shot Franklin in the head.
He then forced Holliday into the woods, where he proceeded to rape her and physically torture her. She pleaded to be taken to his house before she passed out from blood loss, hoping she would find a phone.
Jennifer then expertly manipulated Parnell into believing he had never killed her cousin; that he had stopped on the side of the road to help her, and that she would marry him if he brought her to get treatment for her injuries. The confused Parnell got her help, and he was subsequently charged with murder.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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