A 27-year-old woman from Astoria, Queens, is recovering after being slashed in the neck while hiking on the Havasupai Reservation in Arizona, a remote canyon destination she had traveled to for her birthday. Alexis Rowan survived the attack and returned home with 10 stitches, while a member of the Havasupai tribe has been arrested and charged in the case.
Rowan told Eyewitness News she was about eight miles into her hike, with her partner not far ahead, when she came upon the man. He was the first person she had seen in the village, and she said she stopped to ask him a simple question, whether a nearby building was the gift shop.
Moments later she was attacked from behind. I remember feeling my neck be sliced open, she recalled, describing the terror of believing she was going to die. The wound required 10 stitches once she was able to get help.
Rowan credited a stranger who opened her door after hearing her cries for help. I am just so grateful for the woman that opened the door that heard her screams, she said, adding that the ordeal was something you can never unhear.
Police identified the suspect as 29-year-old Taylor Nardo Paya, a Havasupai tribe member who had previously been convicted as a felon for robbery. Reservation police tracked him down the following day by pinging Rowan's phone and placed him under arrest.
Paya has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon. Because the Havasupai Reservation is federal property, the case is being handled as a federal crime rather than under tribal or state jurisdiction.
The attack has renewed questions about safety for visitors to the remote reservation, which is prized for its vibrant blue waterfalls set against deep red sandstone and long sought out as a sacred place of serenity. Rowan argued that authorities profit from tourism without doing enough to protect the people it draws. You're charging money, but you have nothing to protect the tourists, she said, calling for either a greater police presence on the land or an end to bringing tourists there.