When Stephanie Ng regained consciousness on the afternoon of December 23rd, 2017 the sound of waves and seagulls made her think she was dreaming.
“This dream was comfortable until I realised it was reality and I was alive in a pool of my own blood.”
Then she looked at her hand and felt sick when she saw the exposed flesh from a stab wound to her thumb.
Ms Ng tried to scream but no sound came out. She realised she could not be seen from where she was lying, on the walkway by Dún Laoghaire’s derelict outdoor baths.
She tried to walk towards the road, only to collapse again after a few steps. It was enough to make her visible to a male passer-by. By this stage she had lost four litres of blood; the man would later tell gardaí he was sure she was going to die.
She tried to tell her rescuer what happened but could not get the words out. She put her hand to her throat and realised it had been cut from one side to the other.
Doctors would later tell her the wound went through 75 per cent of her windpipe as well as severing her tendons and damaging her voice box.
Ms Ng (27), a slightly-built south Dublin woman of Malaysian descent, relayed her recollections at the Central Criminal Court on Monday during the sentencing hearing of the boy who pleaded guilty to her attempted murder.
The boy had arranged to meet her via social media and then lured her to the walkway before attacking her. The court heard he first strangled her until she passed out and then cut her throat and thumb.
At times during her victim impact statement, Ms Ng's voice dropped so low she was barely audible. At other stages, it appeared as if she might stop talking altogether. But she persevered; Mr Justice Michael White later made note of her "tremendous bravery."
She described how relieved she was that the boy had not stolen her phone as this allowed her to identity him to gardaí from the pictures he had sent her.
The court heard her physical wounds have mostly healed, although she has been advised she may face complications in later life.
She has nightmares and flashbacks about the attack, she rarely goes out with her friends and she gets frightened whenever she sees teenage boys.
In her address to the court she repeatedly returned to her disbelief that a boy of 15 could try to kill her.
“When they told me your age my head spiralled trying to figure out how someone your age could have such evil intentions,” she told the teenager as he sat a few metres away, beside his parents.
“I was in denial to accept a young, teenage boy premeditated to kill me. And why?”
