Woman stabbed, strangled by man she met online, police say

A woman is recovering after she was stabbed and beaten in her home by a man she met online, according to Clinton police.

Officers were called just after midnight Saturday to the emergency room at Golden Valley Memorial Hospital. A woman with severe injuries had been dropped off at the hospital by a man who told staff that they had been robbed. However, the victim told police that she was actually attacked by the man, identified as 39-year-old Michael Pullums, of Country Club Hills, Illinois.

Authorities said the woman had met Pullums online and started a relationship with him. He was in Clinton on Saturday to visit her, according to police.

Officials said that while at her home, the victim and Pullums got into an argument that escalated into a physical confrontation.

“The man stabbed her several times with a knife and a pair of scissors and then (he) strangled her,” police said Monday in a news release.

After the attack started the woman played dead, hoping to create an opening to flee from Pullums, authorities said. She tried to run outside to escape the attack, but officials said Pullums caught her behind her home and beat her with a metal chair.

“Only when he heard sirens, which turned out to be from a passing ambulance, did he stop his attack on her,” police said.

Pullums loaded the woman into her vehicle and drove her to the emergency room, where he told staff they had been robbed, officials said. He left the hospital in the victim’s vehicle, according to police.

He was arrested a few hours later after deputies in Warren County, Missouri, spotted the victim’s car headed back to Illinois. Police said Pullums was still covered in the victim’s blood when deputies found him.

He was arrested on charges of first-degree domestic violence with serious physical injury.

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