As police search upstate to find Laura Garza dead or alive, another pretty young college student is reliving her nightmare sex attack at the hands of the main suspect in the disappearance.
"I thought I was going to die," 19-year-old Adriana McLean recalled on the "Today" show yesterday. "He was like a predator. He ran after me. I can replay it in my memory vividly, every detail. I started walking a little bit faster, and he was right at my back. I could hear him breathing. So I started running, and he started running."
Her stalker Michael Mele pleaded guilty last year to masturbating on McLean in the parking lot of the Palisades Center Mall in December of 2006. Now a registered sex offender, Mele is back in custody for violating his parole and is a person of interest in the disappearance of the Garza, a 25-year-old Texan who recently moved to Brooklyn and was last seen alive leaving Marquee with Mele.
The 23-year-old Mele is also a suspected in sex crimes in New Jersey and Connecticut. Police have subpoenaed Mele phone records and will continue the search for Garza today.
McLean, now a nursing student in Connecticut, said she's still haunted by the attack.
"I can't really sleep at all," she said. "I feel like it just happened to me. It just totally brought me back to two years ago. It was totally deer in the headlights, and honestly, my only real thought was, 'Oh, my God, what if I die right now? What if I'm raped and killed?'"
