When her roommate suddenly moved out in early 2016, Danielle Cabo Jones needed to find someone to help pay rent fast in her downtown Miami apartment. She posted an ad on Craigslist and soon, Jones was interviewing Byron Mitchell. The Air Force veteran and personal trainer with a clean criminal record told her he could move in for one month.

“Rent is almost due,” Jones said in June, recalling what she was thinking when she agreed to let Mitchell move into her apartment. “I’m gonna lose my home, gonna get evicted, that’ll ruin my life, and he seemed like a nice person,” she said, NBC Miami reported.

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Just one week after moving into Jones’s home, Mitchell ferociously attacked her on Feb. 14, 2016, choking, punching and stabbing her, the Miami Herald reported. The assault left Jones in a 24-day coma, with a cracked skull and broken teeth, her face purple, bloodied and swollen. She suffered brain damage and still struggles with activities she used to excel at before the attack.

“I don’t feel as pretty anymore,” Jones, 26, said in court, WSVN reported, “and I gave up my dreams that I’ve had since I was a little girl.”

On Monday, nearly four years since Jones was nearly killed by a Craigslist roommate, a judge sentenced Mitchell to life in prison. The sentencing came after a jury convicted the 39-year-old of attempted murder and false imprisonment in June.

“I didn’t expect to look normal because I saw my pictures and I thought I would have purple scars all over my face and I would be in a wheelchair,” Jones told CBS Miami. “I’m just happy I’m alive.”

© Provided by The Washington Post Although he initially seemed like a “nice person,” Jones told the jury, shortly after Mitchell moved in, her opinion began to shift. He grew frustrated when Jones disagreed with him. He complained frequently. He texted her incessantly, which got on Jones’s nerves.

“I’m not your girlfriend,” she eventually told him in an attempt to stop the messages.

After the attack, Mitchell phoned 911 and told a dispatcher Jones had rushed at him with a knife in the bedroom, the Herald reported. When police showed up, they found Jones lying unconscious from the impact of Mitchell slamming her head into the floor. A knife lay in a puddle of her blood.

Mitchell had removed his clothes and showered before police arrived, but his hands were still bloody when police arrived. Prosecutors showed photos of his blood-soaked shirt and red hands to the jury.

He deleted Jones’s number and texts from his phone, and dropped her cellphone into water. Despite the effort to cover his digital trail, investigators were able to find texts with Mitchell’s sister asking for advice about possibly dating Jones. Police discovered disturbing Google searches, including a seven-hour hunt for nude photos of Jones that did not exist. Mitchell sought out rohypnol, a common date-rape drug, and over-the-counter sleep aid melatonin, which officers found in the apartment, according to evidence presented by the prosecutors.

Prosecutors argued Mitchell had a crush on Jones, and grew increasingly obsessed with her after moving into the apartment. They said he lashed out after she rejected his advances.

“When this defendant — Byron Mitchell — did not get his valentine, he made a conscious decision to kill,” prosecutor Sara Imm said during closing arguments in June, the Herald reported.

The lead detective on the case told the judge Mitchell had stalked other women. The defendant gave a rambling answer and told the judge his past love interests had misunderstood him.

“I’m not interested in being hostile, or being negative, or making people feel bad,” Mitchell said, the Herald reported. “I’m not interested in putting someone in a casket.”

The man’s defense team tried to convince a jury that Jones and Mitchell had been dating, and she attacked him with the knife before he overpowered the much younger 5-foot-3 woman. The jury did not buy it. Mitchell’s attorneys also had a psychologist present evidence that the man had been bullied as a child and suffered mental health complications from a childhood head trauma. She said Mitchell had not received counseling he needed after his behavior in the Air Force resulted in reprimands.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge John Schlesinger said he did not find Mitchell’s arguments “particularly persuasive,” the Herald reported.

At the sentencing this week, Mitchell made a weak apology to Jones.

“Danielle, I’ve heard everything that you said,” he said. “You said that you had issues with moving forward through life … don’t let a single incident hold you back.”

Jones walked out of the courtroom before he finished.

Almost four years after the devastating assault, Jones’s visible wounds have healed, though she lives with a scar on her forehead.

Unseen injuries still plague her day-to-day life. She still cannot remember the attack itself, though she said she wouldn’t want to. She told the Herald her 11-year-old brother helps her with math now, even though it used to be her best subject in school. She said she once sang and danced very well, but now she struggles to do either.

“I’m still hopeful that every day I’ll get slowly better, but I feel my life has been destroyed,” she said.