TEXAS – Someone attacked a woman from behind in Downtown Dallas for no reason, and now she is telling her story for the first time.
She doesn’t remember much about September 12 other than taking a lunch break from her job at the George Allen Courts Building in downtown Atlanta.
“Somebody was apparently going to get hurt that day, and I happened to be the one who was injured,” she said to FOX 4. “I went downstairs, walked through the lobby, and that’s the last thing that I can recall.”
About a half mile from work, at the corner of Elm and Field Streets, Ferguson was hit in the head with something hard and knocked out.
“It looks like it hurt even though I don’t remember it hurting,” she noted.
After two days, Ferguson can only remember waking up in a hospital.
“Those entire two days are completely gone,” she stated. “From what I understand, I wasn’t unconscious the whole time people talked to me.” It looks like I answered some questions, but I don’t remember anything about it until after surgery.”
Ferguson says that when she fell to the concrete, she got a serious concussion, facial fractures, cuts on her skull, and even a cut in her spleen.
“I don’t understand why someone would feel like they needed to do something like that or had the right to do something like that or felt that it was a good thing to do,” she added.
Ferguson is not afraid to watch the security video of the attack.
Antonio Banks, 36, was charged by Dallas police with aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury after the tape was shown.
Banks has a long list of crimes on his record, including assaulting a public worker and making terroristic threats. During the attack in downtown, he was out on bail.
“He needs to be locked up.” Ferguson said, “He needs to be somewhere he can’t put other people in danger.” “But I would like for him to have the ability, hopefully, to someday become a different person and be a person who does not resort to violence.”
Ferguson says she is still working to get better after having serious brain problems.
“Everybody hears every once in a while about terrible things happening around the world, and no one thinks that it’s going to happen to somebody they know — much less themselves,” she told me.
For now, though, Ferguson is seeing the good side.
“I think I was lucky all around. “Things could have been a lot worse,” she said. “I am so grateful for all of the work that went into helping me to heal to the point that I am now.”
Banks is being held in the Dallas County jail on a $150,000 bond, but his progress on release is being tracked.
