09/01/2026
At just 15 years old, Mary Vincent survived an attack that changed her life forever.
On September 29, 1978, Mary was hitchhiking through California on her way to visit her grandfather in Los Angeles. Late that afternoon, a 50-year-old man named Lawrence Singleton stopped in a blue utility van and offered her a ride.
At first, nothing seemed unusual.
Hours later, he turned off the highway and drove into a remote area. When Mary realized something was wrong, she asked where they were going. Singleton stopped the van, and Mary got out, hoping to leave.
Instead, he attacked her.
She was left with severe injuries and abandoned in a drainage culvert at the bottom of a ravine.
But Mary Vincent did not give up.
Alone, badly injured, and far from help, she remembered something she had learned years earlier while living in the Philippines that could help slow severe bleeding when nothing else was available.
Then she did something almost unimaginable.
She climbed out of the ravine and made her way toward the road.
For nearly four miles, Mary walked along Interstate 5 in the darkness, injured and barely conscious. Eventually, a passing couple spotted her and rushed her to a hospital.
But surviving the attack was only the beginning of her fight.
From her hospital bed, Mary gave police a detailed description of her attacker, helping investigators identify Singleton.
Six months later, fitted with prosthetic arms, she walked into a courtroom and faced him.
She refused to even say his name, referring to him only as “my attacker.”
Singleton was convicted and sentenced to 14 years, the maximum allowed under California law at the time.
He served only eight years.
Many people feared that he could hurt someone else.
Years later, those fears became reality.
In 1997, Singleton was convicted of murdering a Florida woman named Roxanne Hayes.
Mary did not have to return to court, but she chose to.
Nearly 20 years after he had left her for dead, Mary testified against him once again.
This time, the jury sentenced him to death.
Mary Vincent survived the unthinkable, but her story is about more than what happened to her. It is about courage, resilience, and the strength to keep moving forward. 🙏❤️
