A woman from West Virginia who had been in a coma for a stint of two years in the wake of a horrendous attack in her own home has finally woken up and immediately pointed the finger at the man who allegedly carried out the attack: her very own brother.
The woman in question, Wanda Palmer, was barely holding onto life while inside her home in Ravenwood next door to her mother’s house on the 10th of June, 2020. She had been inflicted with massive head trauma, possibly from multiple hits with a hatchet, and police officials did not think she would make it, as reported by Law & Crime.
“I wouldn’t have wagered a nickel for her life that morning,” explained Ross Mellinger, the Sheriff for Jackson County, this past Friday, as reported by WCHS. “She was in that bad of shape. Quite honestly, she was unconscious, circling the drain medically.”
Eileen, Palmer’s mom, stated to WTAP that in the wake of the attack that it was landscapers that discovered her daughter in the house playing in a pool of blood.
“They came Wednesday morning to mow her grass, and they found her in a pool of blood,” expressed Eileen Palmer. “They said they ran up on the hill real fast and told us, and I called the police.”
Eileen Palmer was entirely flabbergasted that such an attack, which was carried out in the quiet town in the western section of the state next to the Ohio River, could have been done entirely undetected.
“I had my windows open in my home, and we never heard one thing,” she stated.
On Friday, Mellinger claimed that his officers had very little to actually go on at the time of the crime. No weapons were recovered and there were no actual witnesses.
“We had a little bit of an idea what happened, but the problem was with the nuts and bolts of the case we had nothing to go on,” he stated via a Friday report to WV MetroNews. “There was no eyewitnesses, nobody [else] lived in the home, no surveillance footage, no cell phone records. There was virtually nothing there to move forward on.”
At the time, police had been suspicious of Daniel Palmer III, aged 55, but they never had enough evidence to build a case until Wanda Palmer woke up and identified him, explained Mellinger.
Once police had discovered that Wanda Palmer had woken up at the facility that had cared for her over the past two years, they were quick to pay her a visit. Despite suffering from some brain damage, she still was able to point out Daniel Palmer as the one who attacked her, police stated to MetroNews.
“From an investigator’s standpoint, this is about as rare as it gets,” explained Mellinger. “I think it’s a true testament to the perseverance and the strength of the victim herself.”
As of writing, Daniel Palmer is in custody and being held in the South Central Regional Jail with a $500,000 bond.