Dori: Madison Valley business owner describes feeling ‘frozen’ during knife attack, attempted rape

When Amber Myers first opened her massage and wellness spa in Seattle’s Madison Valley several years ago, she dreamed of a business where people would just “drop by” and she would know locals by their first name.

That changed last week when a man wearing an orange hardhat entered her shop and tried to rape her at knifepoint, Myers told Wednesday listeners to The Dori Monson Show.

Still shaken by the mid-day attack, Myers now wants others to know about the assault so they can help identify her assailant and better understand how crime can happen anywhere.

“I always felt that Madison Valley is a little sheltered from things,” Myers said. “It’s actually beautiful down here … a pretty, little, boutique main strip.”

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Despite self-defense training and a series of security devices and “panic buttons” set up throughout her business, Myers described how the attack came out of the blue. She told Dori she was censoring her recollections “to keep this safe for everyone to hear because it was actually quite disturbing.”

While on a phone call at the spa’s front desk, Myers said her attacker entered like he was delivering a package. Instead, he “pulled a large knife on me, told me to lock the doors and not scream, threatened my life and detail by detail told me all the horrific things he would do if I didn’t stay quiet.”

Myers described herself as “frozen in the moment” when the suspect grabbed her shoulder and held “the kind of knife you could carve a turkey with” against her ribs.

“I felt like I was walking through ice: frozen, but trying to move forward, trying to think, ‘What can I do? What can I grab? What can I use?’”

After forcing her into a laundry room that was out of sight from the front lobby, Myers’ attacker tried to rape her. After several minutes of trying to defend herself and gain control of the knife, Myers told Dori a co-worker had returned from a break, interrupting the attack. That’s when the suspect bolted from her business, leaving his backpack behind.

“It was full of knives, various styles. It was like a dumpster knife collection: steak knives, totally random things from the kitchen – old and rusty, some of them,” she said.

“In the midst of such a nightmare,” Dori asked, “what’s your message to others?”

“Unfortunately, right now I’m keeping everything locked now,” Myers said. “We’re trying to get a better security system, get a better locking door.”

Myers said her sister, who “lives out in the country,” told her “half-jokingly, ‘I feel like you live in Gotham City these days’ … but it does kind of feel that way. I’ve been here for 18 years, and I just don’t recall ever feeling unsafe before. It is sad.”

If you have any information that may help with the investigation into this attack, please call Seattle Police at 206-684-5575.

Listen to Dori Monson weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.