The arrest of a young man for the murder of Taylor Van Diest is also shedding new light on a previous brutal attack.
In October of 2004, in the community of Cherryville, a 19-year-old woman woke up to find an intruder in her bedroom.
He was wearing a mask. He had a gun, and he quickly turned violent.
He left her badly beaten, but still alive, and the case quickly went cold.
But now charges have been laid in that attack against the same man accused of the Van Diest murder.
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Denise Walterhouse told Global BC how eight-and-a-half years ago, the man who attacked her daughter threw her so hard against the wall that her head split open.
The man told the victim, Kaili Paul, that she then had to come with him.
“I told him I had to go to the bathroom,” said Kaili, “then I was sitting on the bathroom floor and there was blood all over the place, and I got really scared and I didn’t know what to do.”
It was when she came out of the bathroom that she noticed the intruder had a gun.
She said she thought she was going to die, but he didn’t shoot her, he just said he wanted her to come with him.
When she said she was going to pass out, he changed his mind and left – police didn’t know if that was on foot or by car.
The case went cold, but now Kaili and her family are reeling from the news that the man who let her live, may be the same man who would go on to kill a few years later.
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