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Attack Victim Speaks Out

AUBURN (CBS13) - Kathy Stevenson agreed to talk to CBS13 at the Placer County Sheriff's Office Friday, but she wanted us to blur her face because she says she's still scared of the suspect.

"I thought at that point I was dead," said Stevenson.

Stevenson barely escaped a man she believed wanted her dead.

"[I have] cuts in the upper part of my eye, black and blue eyes, bruises in the back of my head from rocks being thrown," said Stevenson.

Deputies say Nicolas Mark Stenberg attacked Stevenson after she tried to serve his girlfriend eviction papers. But, the day before Stevenson served him the same eviction papers and she says he seemed okay. Stevenson says Stenberg even thanked her.

Stevenson doesn't know for sure what made the suspect turn on her but says it could be the papers she'd served him. It was a summons to appear in front of a judge after disobeying a three-day eviction notice of their rental home on Old Dude Road.

When she showed up the next day to serve his girlfriend, she says she waited for Stenberg to leave but he came back and blocked her car with his truck and trailer. Then he went to the garage.

"He came bolting out of the garage with a gun and it looked like a rifle; and, you know, the thought that passed through my mind was, I'm dead," said Stevenson.

As Stevenson ran, she says Stenberg shot her in the back, with what she later found out was an air soft rifle. And he continued to shoot through a crack in her window at close range.

"It seemed like he got angrier the second time I maced him," said Stevenson.

Stevenson says the attack didn't stop even after Stenberg ran out of pellets. She says he used the butt of the gun to smash the window in, and then threw golf-sized rocks at her.

"He reached down and grabbed a handful of mud, and smeared it all over my face 31," said Stevenson.

Stevenson was able to get away and call 911.

"It's kinda scary being around and having that kind of violence," said Stenberg's next door neighbor Debbie Erickson.

Stevenson says Stenberg is a violent person who victimized someone simply doing their job.

"I'm just an innocent victim serving paperwork," said Stevenson.

Both Stevenson and the homeowner who wanted Stenberg evicted have filed restraining orders on Thursday.

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