Caught On Tape: Suspect Ambushes, Repeatedly Stabs Gas Station Clerk

CARSON  (CBSLA)  -- Security camera video shows a Carson Mobil Station clerk walking from the register toward a bathroom.

She was helping a man wearing a red shirt who said the toilet wasn't working.

He ambushed her, slashing her face and stomach. And the clerk says it was all unprovoked.

CBS2's Tom Wait spoke to the victim Wednesday evening via Skype.

She is the mother of six. She was surrounded by her family in San Diego.

"I turned around to my side to face him directly. He had already closed the door and struck me," says 53-year-old Darlecia D'AnDrade.

She has a bandage on her face from where the suspect slashed her.

" I just started screaming why - why are you hitting me?  I hadn't done anything to him. I just didn't understand why - so I was bracing  --trying to figure out what did I do wrong?" D'AnDrade says.

The man would take off. But D'AnDrade was in shock and realized she was seriously wounded.

"He stabbed me several times in my side; I was just so in shock. I was thinking I'm going to be passing out because I bled out in the bathroom," D'AnDrade says.

The attacker would run out of the store and into a car. The suspect drove off and is still on the loose.

D'AnDrade was able to call her daughter and 911.

Now she is trying to cope with the traumatizing ordeal.

"I just don't understand why someone could walk into an establishment and just decide to provoke a horrific accident on someone else's life," D'AnDrade says.

D'AnDrade said in addition to the attack, she's also missing her customers, with whom she is very close.