Police in Tacoma were searching for a suspect who allegedly attacked a lesbian woman by stabbing her and writing homophobic slurs on her body.

The Tacoma News Tribune reported that the woman left her home just before 3 a.m. on Sunday carrying a leash to track down a dog that had gotten loose.

The woman, who only wanted to be identified as “Chris,” told KIRO-TV that a man advised her that the dog had gone down an alley. When she went down the alley to find the dog, he followed.

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“He ran up behind me and he said something like why don’t I sound like a boy, that I look like a boy,” she recalled. “And that’s when it started.”

“Are you a dyke?” she said the man asked. “God hates fags.”

Chris told Tacoma police that the man stabbed her in the breast, jaw, left forearm and left thigh with a pocketknife. Police said that the suspect then stripped away her clothes, and wrote “dyke” on her buttocks and back.

“The suspect then grabbed the dog leash she was carrying and placed it around her neck and dragged her across the ground,” Tacoma police spokesperson Loretta Cool explained.

“I remember getting really light-headed,” Chris said to KIRO-TV. “It was choking me.”

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The man also reportedly spit on her.

Chris said that she believed that the attacker may have been scared off when her dog, Quinn, returned and began barking.

“She’s brutally attacked and I would say left for dead at that point,” Cool remarked. “That’s kind of why it’s so important to catch this man. This could have been anyone walking down the street.”

Chris was transported to a local hospital after neighbors heard the barking and called 911. She was expected to recover, but being targeted for her sexual orientation has left her feeling vulnerable.

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“Some of the writing is still there… [I] can’t get it off,” Chris said. “I haven’t felt safe in my own skin since. I don’t know that I ever will again.”

Watch the video below from KIRO-TV, broadcast Feb. 9, 2015.