Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, breaking news, sweepstakes, and more! Amber Smith moved in with some friends in to try to heal after a violent rape two years earlier, but she had no idea her rapist was hiding in her midst.
Amber Smith lived through something more horrific than most could even imagine. After being violently raped, strangled, and beaten, she was left for dead in a Fort Collins park in August by an unknown attacker, according to Dateline: Unforgettable. In the months that would follow, a terrified Amber was afraid to go out of her home and was suspicious of every man who looked a little too long. Then, two years after the attack, in an attempt to reclaim her life, she moved in with a group of friends, who offered her a safe place to land as she healed.
But she never could have imagined her rapist was among her new roommates. In August , Smith was a year-old single mom, working to make ends meet at a local in the bustling college town of Fort Collins, Colorado.
On the night of the attack, Smith was enjoying a night off with her friend, Aric Vanagunas. The two shared some drinks at Rossborough Park, but after consuming too much, Amber fell asleep at a picnic table at the park. In her final moments before passing out, Smith remembers thinking of her 3-year-old son, Gabriel.
The next thing she remembers, she woke up, naked, bound, and bleeding at another park, Cottonwood Glen Park, on the edge of town around 4 a. People who heard her agonized screams for help, called Rookie cop Dane Stratton was the first to arrive at the scene and followed the harrowing screams to a service road at the park, where he found Smith fighting for her life. She had been strangled and left here for dead. Smith was rushed to the hospital, where doctors tried to stabilize her injuries.
