Tenia Williams said she doesn't know what prompted the knife attack that allegedly happened in the wee hours of Aug. 19.

"I don't think it was premeditated," she told the News-Leader in a Tuesday interview.

As the News-Leader previously reported, police say the 23-year-old Williams met her alleged attacker, 24-year-old Dominic James, on PlentyOfFish, a dating app.

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After she got home from the club on Aug. 19, police say Williams invited James to come into her home, located not far from Ozarks Technical Community College.

"I think he got here and he did what he did after we did what we did," Williams said, referring to two rounds of consensual sex that began after 2 a.m.

Williams is transgender, a detail not previously reported by news outlets or mentioned in an Aug. 28 probable cause statement filed by police.

Transgender generally refers to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their biological birth sex.

Williams said Tuesday that she was upfront about her gender identity with the man who attacked her, in an effort to defuse stereotypes that transgender people want to trick others.

More:Second pleads guilty to crimes connected to murder of Texas County trans teen

She provided the News-Leader with screenshots of their text messages.

"What u mean?" she wrote at 1:54 a.m. on Aug. 19. "I was just being honest n telling u I'm a trans woman so u KNOW."

"ik (I know)," the man wrote back a minute later. "I was just saying, do u want to chill tho."

After hooking up, the two were lying in Williams' bed, she said. Both were naked. Then the man asked to use the bathroom, according to the police statement.

"I said 'sure, the bathroom is out the door to the left,'" Williams said.

The man left the room. "It was a wary feeling," Williams said, "like why is he taking so damn long? But I wasn’t wary to the point where I got up and said, 'Hey what are you doing.'"

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She said she didn't suspect anything. According to the police statement, James then returned. He asked Williams if he could smoke a cigarette.

Williams allowed it, if he'd smoke in the bathroom.

He was gone for 30 seconds, Williams said, and she was lying with her back to the bedroom door when he came back to the bedroom a second time.

"He shot back in the room like he was on some 'WWE SmackDown,'" she said, an apparent reference to the wrestling TV show.

Her attacker began choking her, she said.

"I'm confused at this point," she said. "I'm not fearful, I'm just trying to understand what the hell is going on at this point."

She later told police that she could not breathe with the man's hands around her neck and she believed the man was trying to kill her, according to the probable cause statement.

Next, she told the man to let her go. Williams said he then asked her, "Where is your money?"

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Williams told him she had $1,000 on her table. "I have rings, I have jewelry, okay, you can have it," she said. "I'm kind of screaming, 'You can have it, you can take it, don't kill me.'"

She said she was thinking, "This situation went left. It could go even more left if I don't cooperate."

According to the police statement, Williams broke free from the man and ran toward her front door.

As she moved, she noticed her kitchen light was on. She had turned it off before they went to bed, she told the News-Leader. Williams said she now believes the toilet and cigarette breaks were a cover for the man to search her kitchen for a knife.

"He was buying time to search," she said.

They struggled. Williams said she knew she was bleeding, but not how much. "I didn't know if he'd stabbed me or what."

She added, "In that moment there was not a doubt in my mind that I (was) going to die. I really thought this man was going to kill me."

Police reported that James struck Williams on the back of the head with a large wooden vase. Williams said her head dented the vase.

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"I thought I was going to pass out," she said, "but I thought if I pass out, I can't get out of the apartment."

She said she managed to open her front door. Just as quickly, her attacker closed it. Then she said he stumbled on some clothes and luggage that she'd left in the walkway near the front door.

"It gave me just enough time to get out of the door," Williams said.

Naked and bleeding, Williams said she ran down the stairs of her triplex and banged on a downstairs neighbor's door.

"I had blood all over the door," she said. "When she opened the door, I just ran in before she could say anything."

Police were contacted.

It was a few minutes before Williams' attacker emerged from her apartment, Williams said. Naked, he'd taken time to put clothes back on. Except his shoes. Those remained in her apartment, she said.

The bloody knife was found on her bedroom floor, according to the police statement. It had last been in the kitchen sink or lying on a counter.

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Williams was treated at a Springfield hospital. An injury to the back of her head — located at the top of her neck near her hairline, Williams said — was closed with four staples. Her ankle was cut. So was her wrist. They were glued shut. She also had "a lot of little battle cuts," in her words.

After the assault, the alleged attacker left Missouri to go to Florida, but he was arrested in Monroe County, Georgia, on an unrelated matter, according to the police statement.

The police statement indicates that people on Facebook with whom Williams communicated helped identify the suspect's location before he was picked up.

The incident was widely shared on Facebook, GoFundMe and Twitter, according to the police statement and screenshots provided to the News-Leader by Williams.

On Tuesday, James pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree assault and armed criminal action, according to online court documents.

Greene County Prosecutor Dan Patterson declined to comment Tuesday on whether hate-crime charges had been considered.

Citing the professional-conduct rules set up by the Missouri Supreme Court, Patterson noted that "prosecuting attorneys and law enforcement officers may not comment on the facts of a case beyond that which is in the public record."

He also noted that any defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

James was charged with second-degree assault, a crime not subject to enhanced penalties under Missouri hate-crime law.

Anti-trans violence: a 'dearth of data'

Violence against transgender people is a problem that we don't know much about, said one activist, though almost everyone who studies the problem believes it happens much more often than is reported.

There's a "dearth of data," said Sarah McBride, press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign. The group is a national LGBT rights organization that has published lists of transgender people killed each year.

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As of Tuesday, the United States has experienced 19 killings of transgender people in 2018, according to the HRC website.

In 2017, the number was "at least 28" people, among them Texas County resident Ally Steinfeld, killed Sept. 3, 2017. (Texas County authorities later said they did not find the killing to be a hate crime, the News-Leader previously reported.)

Aside from fatal violent incidents, it's much harder to know how many transgender people survive acts of violence, she said. HRC relies on public media reports to make its lists of fatal violent acts.

"We don’t know the full scope of fatal violence because crime is misreported or underreported," she said. "Nonfatal violence, where media is far less likely to pick up the story or cover the crime, is harder to track."

Federal law calls for data collection of hate crime around sexual orientation and gender identity, McBride said, but it's not mandatory.

"Even in formal mechanisms for data collection," she said, "because it is voluntary, because there's still a lack of inclusive understanding of transgender identity and anti-trans hate crimes, it's difficult to say."

A 2015 report on conditions for transgender people in Missouri surveyed 509 individuals.

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In that report, the National Center for Transgender Equality quantified problems Missouri trans folks face in the domains of income, jobs, education, housing, health, public accommodations, restrooms, police interactions and identity documents.

But the report did not count instances in which Missouri's transgender residents were subject to violence.

Prior to what happened in her apartment on Aug. 19, Williams told the News-Leader that "nobody had ever put their hands on me."

Williams said she generally finds Springfield to be a "peaceful" place and that she doesn't feel singled out as an African-American trans person. She works two jobs in the field of helping people with mental health disabilities, she said.

"I'm always the trans person able to maneuver and do whatever I needed to do in society," she said. "So no, I don't have those problems. I couldn't lie to you."

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