Debbie Joy was driving with her sister Christy Moesch on Tuesday, March 26 on Highway 54 in Lake Ozark when she saw what appeared to be two children getting kicked out of a car and abandoned.

“I turned around to see if they needed a ride,” Debbie said. The sisters were on their way back from taking Christy to cancer treatments in Jefferson City. Christy called 911 to report the incident. Debbie soon discovered it was actually a mother fleeing in terror from her 10-year-old son, who was allegedly trying to kill her. A man was driving the vehicle, and he sped away, leaving the mother, the boy, and Debbie standing on the side of the road.

The mother was a tiny woman and the son was a stocky boy, who came up to Debbie’s shoulders. When Debbie asked him if he needed help, his anger turned on her.

“I noticed you got kicked out of your vehicle, do you need a ride?” she asked again. The boy whirled around and faced Debbie swearing. “You get out of here or I am going to kill you!” she says the boy responded, while swearing and calling her names.

“I was shocked,” Debbie remembered. Debbie’s husband, Craig, is an evangelist and they used to have a ministry where they picked up hitchhikers and sometimes took them across country to get them home. This time she was alone. “I had a [feeling] that I should not stop this time, but I went ahead anyway, because I wanted to help them.” She also recalled earlier having a feeling something bad was going to happen that day.

“I tried to process his anger, and I apologized saying, ‘I thought you might need help.’” The boy turned around and he glared at her in anger. She then says he picked up a rock and angrily tossed it into the highway. “Like he was trying to scare or intimidate me,” Debbie said.

“See!” Debbie says the boy’s mother yelled. “She is not afraid of you!”

“I thought, ‘What did I walk into?’” Debbie recalled.

The boy looked at Debbie, and in a rage, he turned and picked up a jagged piece of a board, she recalled.

“The next thing I knew, he violently struck me in the head with the 2x4, with uncanny strength. He knocked me out cold, to the ground,” she said. Debbie was told later that as she lay unconscious, the boy repeatedly pummeled her in the head with rocks.

Weak from the cancer treatment, Christy could barely walk. She got out of the car, desperately wanting to help, but she could not. She frantically called 911.

Paramedics attended to Debbie’s wounds, and the boy was taken into custody. Debbie went to the Lake Regional Hospital Emergency Room in Osage Beach.

The brunt of the 2x4 caused a deep laceration, just above her eye, causing it to swell shut. “I just kept trusting God and praying ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.’ The miraculous thing is by the time I got to the ER, the swelling had gone down enough I could open my eye,” Debbie said.

The doctor cleaned out the wound. “This cut is all the way to your skull,” he told her. He ordered a CT scan, fearing Debbie may have bleeding on her brain, a cracked or fractured skull, or bone fragments floating in the brain area. “If you have any of these we will have to transport you to a brain specialist at a different hospital,” the doctor said. Debbie started to pray again.

The doctor said he had to sew countless stitches four layers deep to close the wound on her skull. As he worked on her, he also discovered multiple wounds where the boy had bludgeoned her with the rocks. The test results came back, and he reported, “You have a thick and hard head! There is no brain damage.” Debbie shouted, “Thank you Jesus!”

The highway patrolman came to the ER to get statements. “What happened to you was tragic,” he told Debbie. “But the boy told me he had every intention of killing his mother. You saved her life. He said he has no remorse for what he did to you.”

Lake of the Ozarks Police Officer Dylan Green asked Debbie if she wanted to press charges. “I wasn’t sure…he is only a boy,” Debbie thought, at first.

She learned the boy had a violent record and had been in and out of trouble since he was five years old, his mother couldn’t control him, and no one had come forward to make a police report on him. “I decided to press charges, so that he could be held accountable for his actions, and finally be able to get help,” Debbie said.

She says she found out later that the boy’s dad was driving the car and he left them because he thought there a warrant for his arrest. “He left his wife to be killed by the boy,” Debbie said. (She also later learned the fight began when the mom would not let the boy get on the Internet.)

“Both the officer and the patrolman told me that if it weren’t for my intervention, he would have surely ended up killing someone soon,” Debbie said.

“I want to thank all of the emergency personnel, they were so wonderful. I am so very thankful and grateful, everyone took great care of me,” Debbie said.

Because of his age, the boy was never sent to the juvenile home, but after he confessed to trying to kill his mother and Debbie, the charges became serious: attempted murder and violent assault. He was remanded over to juvenile authorities, under special circumstances, and placed in a psychiatric ward. There will be an investigation into his home life.

Debbie went to a follow-up visit, one week later, with Dr. Schekorra at the Versailles Capital Region Clinic. “Dr. Schekorra was amazed at how quickly I healed!” she said, adding, “All glory to the God!”

Debbie said she forgives the boy, and she and her husband Craig pray for him and his family daily. “He obviously has problems and he needed help. I don’t like what I’ve been through, I asked God to forgive me for not listening to His warning, but what a testimony this is to God’s healing power and intervention into many lives that day.”