Alanna Zabel: Yoga teacher who survived 1992 attack defends Dylan Mortensen for delayed response
This article is based on sources and MEAWW cannot verify this information independently.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Former Adam Levine yoga instructor who discovered her roommate bleeding to death in 1992 and has been plagued by "survivors guilt" for years has defended the University of Idaho's surviving housemates for their tardy response to report suspect Bryan Kohberger to police by dialling 911. Alanna Zabel, 50, has revealed the 'eerie similarities' of the attack she survived more than 30 years ago and the response the sole witness Dylan Mortensen had after the brutal killings.
The yoga teacher, while slamming the critics told the Daily Mail that "people don't know how they'd react" in a similar situation. Dylan Mortensen is suffering along with Bethany Funke, after the killings of her four friends, Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, both 21 years old, Xana Kernodle, and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin. Apparently, Mortensen watched the suspect walk past her while she was in a "frozen shock state."
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Zabel, a University of Buffalo student who lived off campus with five sorority sisters, claimed she could relate with the 'anguish' Mortensen and Funke are experiencing. She admitted that she, too, had a delayed reaction and felt bad about going to bed despite hearing loud, muffled breathing in her roommate's room; she only called the police the following day, as told to the outlet. The websleuths are making it miserable for the surviving roommates by asking questions as why they slept through and didn't call the cops sooner.
"Someone was stalking us and broke in one night while we were out partying and drinking late," she said, adding, "They brutally beat and raped my housemate. I found her six hours later and she nearly died." Zabel further said, had "heard muffled breathing" from her roommates room but had assumed that she was with her boyfriend. The next morning at around 9 am, Zabel entered the victim's room to ask her to move her car and said that she had been overpowered by the stench of vomit. "I didn't see any blood at first, even though the room was covered in it,'" she said.
"I only saw liquid, her hair caked on her face, tongue sticking through her teeth, she recalled the gruesome act. After suspecting she had choked of her own vomit because of "drinking too much" but she called 911 and her parents a little while later. It was only after paramedics arrived at the scene who noticed the blood, that she realized the room was covered with it. "The psychologist said it was a protective mechanism. The wall had what looked like red broom marks,' she said, adding, victim's "hair was soaked in blood, so was the bed and the floor. They think he used a hammer." As
Zabel has noted the "eerie similarities" to the University of Idaho quadruple homicide case.
Experts claim "frozen shock phase" may make a person disassociate with what is happening around. “When your body is in shock and you think you’re going to die or you think you’re in a threatening situation, adrenaline surges your sympathetic nervous system and takes off, and you may experience a frozen state where consciously you know what’s happening, but then a coping mechanism is for you to dissociate,” Dr Judith F. Joseph, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at New York University Grossman School of Medicine at NYU Langone Health told NBC News.
People who have experienced it said they felt as if they were not part of their bodies, a state brought on by traumatic shock, she said. “People may disassociate in and out for hours, especially if they’ve been through severe trauma,” Joseph said, adding that their minds wander to another place to get away from the trauma or fear.