Witnessed a suicide. Stabbed 7 times less than 24 hours later. Lived to tell my story.

I sat in a hotel room by myself on June 3rd 2021, after being awake for 3 straight days on a cocaine and alcohol binge. This had become regular for me. I got a tip on Reddit to invest in AMC stock 6 months earlier. I was up $40,000.

In my mind, I was set for life. Other than the BP2 diagnoses, the crippling substance abuse issues, lack of social skills and abysmal physical health…life was good?

I decided to take a trip to Cartagena, Colombia. While sitting in the hotel room next to JFK airport to get on my flight in a few hours, I felt an overwhelming sense of doom. I was used to cocaine paranoia at the time, this was much different. Something was telling me not to get on the flight.

I went to the airport anyway. About an hour before take off. For an international flight. Obviously I missed it. Another sign to not go? Probably.

JetBlue offered me another flight for free the next day. Cool. Back to the hotel. I contacted my dealer and had him drop off another $300 worth of cocaine.

The next morning, on day 4 of my binge , I made my way over to JFK and flew into Cartagena. I picked a random hotel for $15 a night and settled in. I had no return flight, no worries.

I went to the roof of the hotel to smoke a cigarette and struck up a conversation with a few locals on the roof. My Spanish was más o menos at the time, but they seemed cool. They offered me cocaine. Yes was always the answer to that question.

As the day turned to night, more people started coming up to the roof. I realized this was a hotel for homeless locals, not a tourist spot. Partying with them was fun, when they weren’t trying to scheme on me, not realizing I understood Spanish.

In Latin America, “gringo prices” are most definitely a thing. I was paying 3x more for the hotel, the drugs and the drinks than anyone else. Most of these towns in Latin America hadn’t seen a white person since before Covid. They needed the money, which was fine.

I ended up meeting a girl who went by “Isabella” who, unlike the others in the hotel, was not Colombian. She was a Venezuelan refugee forced into prostitution as her only way to survive. She informed me of the rip off prices I was paying, which was nice of her.

Also unlike all the other hotel “guests”, Isabella hated drugs and drinking. She liked exercise and drinking water. We became friends over the week that I stayed in the hotel and when I informed her that I was going to be renting a $1200 3 bedroom Airbnb on the ocean, she seemed very upset.

I invited her to come look at it with me and when I checked in, she never left. For the rest of June and July we stayed there together. That was the happiest time period of my life.

August rolled around and we had started to argue as my continued drug use was something that bothered her. It was weird to have someone actually care. Obviously the response of an active addict is to push that person away.

She was heartbroken.

I started avoiding her and hanging around with locals that did as much drugs as me. One thing about Isabella is she practiced a form of witchcraft known as “brujeria”. I never believed in the supernatural until August 2021.

After a 3 day binge with several locals over, the party ended and one girl remained. I had known her for a few days but at the time, I couldn’t tell you what her name was.

She had been doing a drug called “tusi” which is a mix of MDMA and Ketamine. Or so they say. That morning she was coming down from the cocktail of drugs she had consumed. She informed me that she was planning on killing herself. I think about this part of the story a lot.

I didn’t know her well enough to gauge the seriousness of the statement, so I politely asked her to leave.

She went into the bathroom and closed the door while I went into my bedroom and layed down. About 30 mins later, I walked over to the bathroom and noticed the door was still closed. I called out but heard nothing.

A little worried now that she actually did kill herself, I kicked the bathroom door in. What I saw is something I’ll clearly never forget.

She had used a wet towel and hanged herself from the towel rack. Her neck was completely extended and eyes wide open but glazed over with a grey-ish film over the.

I cut her dead body down from the rack and attempted CPR, but she was long gone. As the cops came and removed the body, I cried harder than I think I ever have in my life. I’ll never get those images out of my head.

For a country with one of highest homicide rates in the world, the cops didn’t bat an eye. They took a statement and told me to stay somewhere else that night because they needed to investigate the Airbnb.

I went to another hotel and received numerous messages from “friends” asking me what happened. I told them exactly what I witnessed and a girl named Dayana offered to meet me and talk.

She came to the hotel, but not alone. She brought the girls brother, who was about 250 lbs of muscle and also carrying a gun and knife. He blamed me for his sisters death, even though I had no clue who these people even were.

Without getting into too many details, he came in through the hotel window while Dayana had left. I was still shaken up by the events of a few hours prior, so I didn’t really understand the severity of the situation I had found myself in.

My last moment before I became paralyzed for life, I remember this man jumping onto my bed and punching me in the face almost immediately. Broken nose, blood everywhere. As I tried to fight back, he punched me in the ribs. Broken ribs, collapsed lung. He pulled out a box cutter and I felt little pinches, 3 to the neck, 3 to the back and 1 to the abdomen.

Still somehow conscious, I felt him put a gun to my head with the pillow in between as a silencer.

The gun either jammed, was unloaded or he decided that I was already dead so no reason to use it. To be fair I was basically dead.

The only thing was the majority of the blood was from my broken nose, whereas he had assumed he’d hit my carotid artery. He missed by a millimeter on both sides, I later learned.

Still conscious, a few thoughts went through my head as I laid there completely incapacitated. First I was thinking wow, my body probably won’t make it back to the states. Then I thought, why am I not dead yet? This is starting to hurt.

After about 5 minutes I tried to get up but because the box cutter had hit my spinal cord, I was paralyzed.

I felt a warmth pass over me and some sort of entity carry me across the hotel room and open the door as I fell asleep. I woke up 7 days later in a Colombian ICU stitched up with a tube vacuuming the fluid out of my lung. I remember the shock of the nurses near me. They couldn’t believe I woke up.

Shortly thereafter I flew back to the states and entered an ICU in New York. Every EMT, spinal surgeon, MRI Technician I spoke with could not believe I had survived the injuries I sustained. One even cried when she read my files.

I wasn’t spiritual before, but there’s some weird reason I’m still here. I still talk to Isabella. God bless her and her brujeria.

Thanks for reading.