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Brennan Doyle, now 28 years old, was sentenced to 15 years in state prison for attempted murder and carjacking, according to state Department of Corrections records. He pleaded guilty to the Tuesday, July 7, 2015 stabbing of Donna Ongsiako in her Colts Neck home.
In an interview with CBS's "48 Hours", Ongsiako said she opened her door just after midnight to let her cat back in the house when she saw Doyle standing outside with a knife.
"I tried to slam and shut the door," said Ongsiako. "He stuck the knife through the opening, and I cut my finger so that I immediately let go of the door."
Doyle, who was 16 at the time, forced his way into the home and repeatedly stabbed Ongsiako without saying anything. When he finally spoke to her, Ongsiako said he asked her for her car keys and a lighter.
Ongsiako told him both were on the kitchen table and he grabbed them, along with her purse. Before leaving, he returned to her as she was bleeding on the floor.
Ongsiako said she remembers a chilling thing Doyle told her before nearly killing her.
"He said, "You dead b***h" and plunged the knife into my chest," she said.
With no landline and her cellphone upstairs charging, Ongsiako said she didn't want her adult daughter Kiersten to return home from a party and find her dead.
"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," said Ongsiako.
Despite heavily bleeding, she somehow got to her phone to call 911, describing her injuries and attacker before losing consciousness.
Ognsiako said she's still not sure how she made that call.
"There was divine intervention that helped me up those stairs," she said. "No doubt. No doubt in my mind."
Ongsiako was rushed to the hospital and her life was saved after seven hours of surgery. Doyle wasn't arrested until several months later when police linked his DNA to some found in Ongsiako's stolen car.
Doyle told investigators that he became paranoid after taking magic mushrooms and his father locked him out of their home because he had a knife in his hand.
"The drugs turned me into a monster that night," Doyle said in court at his sentencing. "I am truly sorry."
Ongsiako doesn't believe Doyle was too high to control himself.
"This kid allegedly on all these mushrooms whacked out of his mind, manages to ditch a knife," she said. "He abandons the car. That's not a kid who's so high on mushrooms, he doesn't know what he's doing."
Doyle was tried as an adult and pleaded guilty to the attempted murder and carjacking charges in August 2015. Department of Corrections records said he was scheduled to be released from state prison on Monday, Nov. 15, 2027.
Ongsiako has created a support group called "Survivors of Violent Crimes" to help victims in Monmouth and Ocean counties.
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