MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A Twin Cities woman is sharing a dramatic story of survival from her hospital bed.

“All I could think of was, ‘I need to figure out a way to make him stop hurting me,” Morgan Evenson said.

A stranger tackled Evenson as she walked home from work in Uptown last week. When she fought back, he started stabbing her.

December was shaping up to be a big month for the 27-year-old. She just accepted a promotion with Apple in Nashville, and was planning to move there with her fiancé Patrick. But while walking home from one of her last days of work in Minneapolis at 8:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, her life took a an unexpected path.

“It was just pure terror,” she said. “I’ve never experienced something so terrible in my life.”

Evenson was doing what many do when they walk alone: checking over each shoulder, making sure no one was following her — but this time, someone was.

“He was all of the sudden running at me, and he tackled me and we struggled for a long time — for what felt like minutes,” she said.

Evenson and her attacker thrashed back and forth in the snow as she remembered a survival technique her fiancé had taught her.

“I was, for the most part, trying to pull down his pants and claw at him, more than anything,” she said.

She screamed as she fought, and people rushed to her aid as the attacker ran off. At first, she says she was numb.

“The moment I initially realized I was being stabbed was when the two people initially pulled me up off the curb in the snow, and I just felt liquid rush down my back, and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, what happened to me? This can’t be good,” she said.

She suffered 14 stab wounds. Now, she’s fighting against infection — fighting against fear.

“I’ve never been afraid of anything, and I’m really pushing that this doesn’t affect who I am, and change me for the worse,” she said.

Evenson has absolutely no idea what her attacker was trying to do — she’s just so grateful for the strangers who helped save her.

Police are still trying to find a suspect.

Evenson says she is still planning to move to Nashville at the end of the year to accept her new promotion. She and her fiancé say they will live in a gated, high-security apartment.

Evenson’s friends are fundraising to help her and her fiancé cover the bills not covered by insurance. Click here to donate.