A Home Invasion in Colts Neck

0:00Music

0:14It is farm country, horse country, bucolic, upwardly mobile, wealthy type of community, affluent. It's a quiet place. Tiny unassuming house. Just a simple farmhouse. Colds Neck has a lot of these. Yes. This beautiful little farmhouse with this beautiful farm star, you know, in the middle of it.

1:03In July of 2013, I was an assistant prosecutor in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Donna Nshako was alone. She had just gone to bed for the evening. An intruder came into her house and attacked her, stabbing her repeatedly.

1:25911 where's emergency? Oh my name is Don Ong Shaka I just got stabbed. Where are you?

1:33Kid just came in and stabbed me. I'm taking it in my heart. I'm pouring gushing blood. I'm losing consciousness. Keep your eyes open. Donna? Donna? I was driving home. It was maybe like 3 o 'clock in the morning, 3.30. As I pulled up closer, I saw big SUVs, cop cars, lights flashing everywhere. I was like, where is my mom? and they were like well she has been attacked and she's on her way to the hospital they couldn't tell me whether she was alive or she wasn't

2:37i was new into major crimes i didn't have the experience at some of the older detectives so i had never seen that much blood in before Why would somebody do this? Who did this? What did she ever do to anybody, you know? On that night, in the early morning hours, we got a 911 call from a worker from this restaurant. About how far from Donna's house are we standing right here? This is about an eight-minute drive. They called because they saw a subject walking through their drive-thru. Aberdeen, detention police. One of my customers were in drive-thru or approached by a man with no shirt but had a knife in his hand.

3:23Knocking on windows, carrying a knife. One of the witnesses who saw the young man, she agreed to come in and give a sketch. Everybody was asking about the police sketch. It was in every store. People were frightened. Can you tell me about the tip? I get a call. The woman on the other end says that she's calling about the stabbing in Colts Neck. She said, I think my cousin may have something to do with that.

4:16We'll be right back.

4:44sits just 50 miles from New York City. But it might as well be a world away. So in July 2013, this quiet community was rocked by news of a violent home invasion where the victim was stabbed repeatedly. The only thing more shocking? My name is Donna Ongshako. The victim survived. I lost in total, close to three-quarters of the blood in my body. There's no earthly reason why I'm alive. None. If I had asked you at the time to give me a list of 100 things you're worried about, where would have home invasion been? Oh, no. Never.

5:34Donna worked for a company that brokered fuel for ships on the nearby Jersey Shore. She and her daughter Kirsten lived in this farmhouse on the edge of flower fields. She was 20 when she had me. So we're only 20 years and one day apart. Friend Sharon Sharp hired Donna decades ago. Kirsten had just been born? Yeah, Kirsten was a baby. I thought she was really brave, being a single mom, very young.

6:06I was by her side. all the time. Kirsten, who now works as a welder, recalls what life was like just prior to her mother's attack. We were going to the gym multiple times a week. Not only was she like mentally strong, but she was physically strong. She was so fit. She did tough mudders with Kirsten. I like that competition. I like to show strength, physical strength. Things couldn't have been any better at that time.

6:42That's when Saturday of July 4th weekend rolled around. Monmouth County detective Andrea Tazi says they were having a heat wave. It was humid, but we had no rain or anything like that. I mean, it was a dry night. So Donna had her windows open. Yes. She had her windows open just to circulate air. Kirsten was out at a party.

7:10So I was home doing laundry. I'd say about 11, 1130. I decide I'm going to get ready for bed. I let the cat out. I went and brushed my teeth. But just as she was drifting off to sleep... I heard what I thought was the cat. I heard something, and I remembered, oh, I forgot to let the cat in. Without turning on any lights, Donna headed downstairs to open the front door for her cat. But instead, when I opened the door, I saw someone standing there. In the split second after seeing this person, on my porch, I saw the knife. He was trying to cut into the screen of the window that was right next to the front door.

8:01She says she didn't recognize the young white male standing right in front of her, holding a large knife. I tried to slam and shut the door. My fingers were protruding out. He stuck the knife through the opening and cut my finger, so that I immediately let go of the door, and then he pushed his way in. I'm backing into my kitchen. We're face to face. It didn't register to me that he was actually going to stab me. But without a word, that's exactly what the stranger did. He slashed my cheek, and you can see that here, and actually it starts back here. There was no way to process that that happened.

8:51Donna's attacker came at her with the knife again. He then slashed three times on the side of my neck. She tried grabbing the knife, but only cut her own hand in the process. Did you feel like you were dealing with somebody who was really strong? No, but I felt like he was very sure. Like, he was very in control of himself. Donna was starting to weaken from the injuries. I felt like my legs were going to give out. So I braced myself against the corner of my bathroom right next to the front door. Sure enough, she slid down to the floor. I was in fetal position, and I'm bleeding. And he came over, and it was kind of like he was playing, you know, with the knife, and just started jabbing at me.

9:41So that's when he caught me here, and he got me in the back of my neck here. Finally, Donna's attacker spoke to her. This was when he decided to ask me for my car keys and if I had a lighter. A lighter? Mm-hmm. I just answered him. There's a lighter in my purse, and my purse was on the table back in the kitchen. So he went over and was rummaging through my purse and got the keys, got the lighter. Donna's assailant ended up taking her entire purse with him, but not before returning one last time to Donna, still bleeding on the floor. He said, you dead bitch, and plunged the knife into my chest.

10:27Once he plunges the knife in and then removes it, what does he do then? He just walked out the door. With no neighbors in earshot, Donna knew she must get help, somehow. Your phone isn't in reach. No, my phone was upstairs in my bedroom, charging. Donna had no landline in the house. But even as the blood was draining rapidly from her body, she had one pressing concern above her own survival. Pearson could come home and find me. I just didn't want her to have to experience any level of the horror that I had just gone through or any other levels in finding me there, dead. So this is a mother's instinct as pure as it gets.

11:17Yes, absolutely. Yeah. You know you have to get upstairs if you're going to be able to make a call for help. Right. How do you get up those stairs? That I don't know. There was divine intervention that helped me up those stairs. No doubt. No doubt in my mind.

11:56She's a tiny little woman. You have to imagine that many stab wounds. And she just willed it. She was not going to die there. Former Monmouth County Assistant Prosecutor, Lori Gerhart says Donna Ankshaka was determined her daughter Kirsten would not come home to find her dead. She knew she had to get to her cell phone upstairs. I don't remember my feet or my hands actually touching the stairs. The energy that it took for me to get up off the ground and up those stairs, I was definitely guided. The amount of strength that goes into that is just unimaginable. But the motivation was you. Yeah. Yep.

12:46Maybe I was there, guiding her in spirit. Once Donna made it upstairs, she faced a new challenge after peering out her bedroom window. She had a car sitting right here? Right, she had a car sitting right in this area. I could still see the car was there, and I could see the car was on and he was in it. If I take my phone off the charger, it's going to light up. He's going to see the light. Afraid her attacker would come back for her, Donna did her best to hide the light of the phone. Then, just getting it to work became the next hurdle. My hands are covered in blood, my touchscreen. I was trying to swipe and swipe, so I ended up having to wipe my hands off, wipe the phone off, wipe it down on the bed, and then I was able to do the touchscreen and get through to 911.

13:34Oh, my name is Donna. I just got stabbed really bad. The kid just came in and stabbed me, and he stole my car. Okay, okay, okay, just stand up on me, okay? Where did you get stabbed? In the neck, blood is pushing out, and in the chest. Detective Andrea Tazi says Donna's ability to place that call despite her injuries was amazing. But then Donna did something even more extraordinary. she gave a detailed description of her attacker. Okay, do you know what he looked like? Yeah, he was probably about 17. White, real skinny, curly hair. Blonde, dirty blonde hair. Backpack. It was pretty chilling to listen to Donna and be able to hear her accurately talk about this is what happened, this is what he looks like.

14:20I'm losing consciousness. And then hear her fade out. Donna? Donna? Hello, Donna? Donna? Yes, ma 'am. I think I just got down for a minute. Police and paramedics arrived less than eight minutes after Donna dialed 911, but her attacker had already fled. Donna was rushed to Jersey Shore University Medical Center and into trauma surgery. It would be a few more hours before Kirsten arrived home from her party to a house surrounded by flashing lights. I saw the caution tape and that her car was gone. Police told Kirsten what happened to her mother. You were deeply shaken. Oh, yeah. I remember at one point my knees buckled.

15:12They had the SUV, the undercover cop car. The trunk was open. So I was like, can I sit here? Because I feel like I'm going to pass out. As Kirsten was processing the news, an all-out manhunt had already begun for Donna's assailant. Detective Tazi says another 911 call had come in shortly before Donna's attack. I was going to pick up my daughter, and there was a kid hitchhiking. From a driver who saw someone walking along the road near Donna's house. They saw a young man with a backpack and khaki pants. He was walking close to the fog line and kind of stepping into traffic, and she felt that he was kind of a hitchhiker.

15:55He was on the northbound side, walking southbound, and I'm afraid he's going to get hit by a car. How old about? I'm going to say like 18, 19, 20, something like that. She was concerned because she just thought that maybe he needed help in some way. And was the car dispatched? Yes, yes. They didn't find him, though. Still, the good Samaritan driver had inadvertently given the investigation its first leave. I felt that the hitchhiker was my person. It was too coincidental for that time of the night in that area for somebody to be walking. And then 15 minutes later, Donna's calling say that she was stabbed.

16:38And there was about to be another tip not long after Donna's 911 call from a fast food restaurant five miles from her house. They saw a subject walking through their drive-thru, knocking on windows, carrying a knife. And it looked like it had blood on it. Employees from the Taco Bell quickly called police. Do you have any description of him? Yeah, he was wearing, you know, like those army pants. And he had no shirt. He was white with like really like bushy hair, but it was like long, like the skater type hair. How old was he? I don't know. He looked like he was like 18. Police rushed to the Taco Bell and started canvassing the nearby shopping center.

17:20They didn't find their suspect, but they did find something else. So there had been a bolo put out on Donna's vehicle. Be on the lookout. Right. And in the process of looking for this person here, they found the car. Donna's stolen car, this BMW, had been ditched behind a movie theater. It was lights on and it was running. So it clearly was an abandoned vehicle. Tazi says the car would become crucial. There was blood all over it. And so we were hoping that we would get some kind of DNA evidence of our suspect. Did you? We did.

18:22Sharon Sharp will never forget the dread she felt when she arrived at the hospital to see her friend Donna Anshako, only to be told she wasn't there. I'm picturing the color draining from your face and the air leaving your lungs. Totally. No, this cannot be. There's no way she has to be here. Did you think maybe she had died? Yes. Yes. It turned out, with her attacker still on the loose, the hospital had admitted Donna under an alias to protect her. Sharon was allowed to see Donna the next day. An intensive care room I've never seen before. It looked like an enlarged, massively enlarged cockpit wall because there were tons of machines behind her, and she looked almost like a puppet.

19:08The surgery was seven hours, I believe. Despite losing three-quarters of the blood in her body, trauma surgeons had saved Donna's life, but at a tremendous cost. You may find the pictures you're about to see disturbing. I pretty much looked like a living cadaver. I had 37 stitches on my face and neck, 38 staples in my chest, 7 stitches in my hand, and now internally my sternum is wired shut. And as for that final stab to Donna's chest, just before her assailant left... It missed my heart by the edge of a dime, is what I remember them telling me. The edge of a dime. When she talks about the margin that the knife missed her heart by...

20:03Yeah. If she was any slouched over, any more, that would have been it. Kirsten says as soon as her mother was able to talk, she had one simple request. I remember her saying, all I smell is this blood in my hair. Can somebody please wash my hair? Sharon says they got permission and then she and two of Donna's family members did their best to wash Donna's hair as she lay in her hospital bed. We were determined to see if we could make her smile. So we turned it into a ridiculous idiot session with three of us like a factory line. We laughed through our tears. And anytime anybody would get too serious, we'd make it funny.

20:52But her hair was far from Donna's biggest concern. She was sure her attacker would find her and finish the job. She was convinced that he was in the hospital. and we kept telling her, no, you're here under an alias. I survived. I stood face to face with him. I could 100 % positively identify him. He's coming back for me. Detective Tazi says they were pretty sure the young man knocking on windows at the Taco Bell drive-thru shortly after Donna's attack was their suspect. Within two days, a customer who saw him met with a police sketch artist. and was able to provide pretty great details on the person she saw that night.

21:39Investigators then took the sketch to the hospital. What did Donna say when she saw that sketch? She said, yeah, that was incredibly accurate. She tweaked it a little bit. She said that, yes, that looks like the person who stabbed me. His curly blonde hair, he was like a surfer kid or a skateboarder or something like that. Former assistant prosecutor Lori Gerhardt says the sketch of the suspect was soon plastered all over Monmouth County and on law enforcement social media. So people are obviously talking and trying to figure out, do we know him? Where is he from? Who is this kid? And it's scary because you like to have a sense of security in your community.

22:26Investigators reviewed the cameras of stores in the shopping center near the Taco Bell to see if they'd get lucky and spot their suspect, hoping the more images they had, the more likely the chance of identifying him. We were trying to go back and look at video from various businesses to see the description and really to put out the bolo, like this is who we're looking for. Security cameras had captured the suspect once again. The surveillance we got from the store over there was from the inside of the store, but it was pointing outwards. I see. And it definitely caught him. Oh, yeah. You could see him walking.

23:02Wow. As police kept looking for the suspect, Donna was turning a corner, at least physically. Amazingly, after just four days, Donna Angshako was released from the hospital. Sharon says that was all due to the training Donna had done prior to the attack. Clearly, she's very physically fit. She couldn't have survived this if she wasn't. It's an amazing thing. You were out in four days. But as you leave the hospital, you are also walking back into a world where whoever did this to you is still out there. Right. But also, I wasn't going back to the farm. I wasn't going back to my house. No, there was no way.

23:51In fact, Donna would never step foot in her house again. She and Kirsten moved in with family living in New Jersey. Then, just eight days after the attack, not long after the police sketch began circulating, Detective Tazi's phone rang. I take the call, and the woman on the other end says that she's calling about the stabbing in Colts Neck. I said, OK. I said, how can I help you? And she said, I think my cousin Brennan Doyle may have something to do with that. It was the first time Tazi had heard the name Brennan Doyle. He was just 16 years old. His cousin told Tazi word was going around her family that Brennan was involved in the Colts' next stabbing.

24:39The cousin had seen Brennan just days prior to Donna's attack. between July 3rd and 6th because he was up in Connecticut for her wedding with his family. He had attended her wedding. He attended her wedding, and she was able to provide us a picture of what he looked like during the time he was up there for the wedding. The photo she sends is Brennan with long curly hair wearing camouflage shorts, looking very much like the kid in the sketch and, more importantly, on the videotapes. Brennan's resemblance to this sketch all around town was about to become even more important because of what the cousin told Detective Tazi happened a few days later.

25:23She was staying at Brennan's family's lake house in New Hampshire as a wedding gift. And Brennan, his brother, and the mother showed up there unexpected. Hang on. This woman is in Lake Winnipesaukee. She's on her honeymoon? Yes. And all of a sudden, there's Brennan, Brennan's mother, Brennan's brother, crashing her honeymoon? Yes. And the dog. But what was even more surprising was Brennan's appearance. Brennan's hair was cut. The next time she sees him, he's cut his hair. Yes. So that's a big red flag. Yes.

26:14Brennan Doyle's cousin told investigators that Brennan showed up just days after Donna's attack, hundreds of miles from home, with his hair suddenly cut short, similar to this. Like Donna, the Doyle family resided in Colts Neck. Former assistant prosecutor Lori Gerhardt. We lived in a very nice house, two sons, a mom and a dad. The life of a typical Colts next teenager, it's a life of wealth. It's a life of privilege. Doyle was a student athlete on wrestling and hockey teams. Detective Tazi started digging into his background. He had never been arrested. There was never any charges filed against him prior to our investigation.

26:58According to the prosecutor's records, police had been called to the Doyle house for what they refer to as family conflicts. The location of the home would turn out to be very important. Where did Brennan live? So if you make a right up here and you go up maybe a quarter of a mile on the left. So that's close. Yeah. The teen and his family lived within walking distance of Donna's house. Up the very road that driver had reported seeing someone she described as a young hitchhiker just prior to Donna's attack. I'm afraid he's going to get hit by a car. When does the Doyle family return to Colts Neck?

27:39Later in July. With Brennan and his family back in town, Tazi reached out to the family, saying investigators were canvassing the neighborhood. What happened when you went to the house? We spoke with Mrs. Doyle. She was nervous. Her voice was cracking. Did this raise an eyebrow for you? It did. We asked if Brennan and his brother could come and look at the composite sketch. and if they had any idea who that person might be on the sketch. Did Brennan come out? He did. Tazi says she wanted to see Brennan's hair to confirm what his cousin had told her, that it had been cut much shorter. It seemed the teen tried to stay a step ahead when he came out to greet the detective.

28:24He was wearing a hat. He was wearing a baseball hat. I think wearing a baseball cap was a calculated move. It might have been, but it didn't work. You could tell his hair was cut short. Next, Tazi showed Brennan the police sketch of the suspect, the same one Donna helped tweak to look just like her attacker. How did he react? He looked away. He looked at it, looked away, and said, I don't know. I don't know. He was nervous and he was scared, and he got very quiet. There is a reaction. Eyes are down, no eye contact, people are nervous. Mom starts redirecting the conversation. Doyle's family and his attorney denied our request for an interview.