He followed her for about half a mile on a balmy August evening, and walking at a steady pace managed to keep up with her slow jog. Aware that he was behind her, she went for a walk under a bridge on Salem Avenue, hoping it would pass. He used that moment to attack.

She screamed for help and struggled to squirm as he pulled her off the sidewalk and onto a patch of dirt. Seconds passed, maybe 20. He didn’t let go. The Long Branch Trail and Research Parkway were in sight. Traffic flowed on the overhead bridge. But this stretch of road, not far from the center, was deserted.

Through terror and panic, the clearest of thoughts formed in her mind.

He was going to kidnap her, rape her and kill her or sell her to sex traffickers.

“I wasn’t going home,” she remembers thinking. “I was never going to see my family again.”

Ingrid Schnader puts a name and a face to a crime that has scared many women in Winston-Salem, especially those women running alone like she was doing on that August evening in 2023.

Most media outlets, including the Winston-Salem Journal, do not publish the names of sexual assault victims because of the highly sensitive nature of the crime and its stigma. Publishing names may also deter other women from reporting such crimes, which are already underreported.

With her attacker recently convicted and serving time, Schnader, 27, feels ready to speak freely about what happened, not as a warning to other women, but to remind them that they have every right to move through world with the same confidence, fearlessness and sense of security as men.

There is also another reason.

Schnader wants to be the voice of women who went out for a run and never came back.

Women like Alyssa Lokits, 34, who was shot and killed on a greenway in Nashville, Tennessee, earlier this month.

And Laken Riley, 22, a nursing student who was beaten and strangled to death while on a morning run in Athens Ga. in February.

And Judith Nilan, 44, who was kidnapped and beaten to death in Woodstock, Connecticut, in 2005.

Wikipedia maintains a long list of people killed while running.

Often the answer to such deaths is for women to be more careful.

“That’s not fair. Yes, always be aware of your surroundings. But when are we going to make sure men understand consent?” Schnader said. “We want to be able to walk outside. We don’t want to be drawn. We want to be comfortable in our bodies. I want to be a voice for these women who can’t speak. It’s just not fair, and I don’t know when it will change.”

Schnader started running in January 2023, shortly after she and her husband moved to Winston-Salem. A fitness freak, Schnader said she liked that it was more convenient than mountain biking, which often requires transporting a bike and driving on a trail.

Working remotely from her apartment in Plant 64 in the Innovation Quarter, Schnader found it easy to run by simply going outside and up the Long Branch Trail, popular with dog walkers, runners and cyclists.

She often chose a route popular with local running clubs—taking the Long Branch Trail along Research Parkway, turning right on Rams Drive and another right on Salem Avenue, leading back downtown.

“I always felt safe,” she said.

Schnader saw running alone as an act of independence, perhaps even defiance. She said she was in a relationship with a man who controlled her every move, who wouldn’t have let her run alone if she had been a runner at the time.

“So it was really important to me after that relationship that I didn’t have any man telling me what to do,” she said.

After pushing himself a little too hard in preparation for the April 2023 CraftHalf Half Marathon, Schnader changed his training methods, focusing more on intervals, which sometimes meant running at a slow pace to keep his heart rate down .

On the evening of the attack, Schnader went for a run around 5 p.m., when the temperature was around 85 degrees. A few hundred yards from the starting point, she saw a young man, Dylan Cody Smyers, walking toward her on Research Parkway. She tried to do what she says all Alabamians do — make eye contact and say “Hey.”

“It’s Southern hospitality,” Schnader said.

Smyers, Schnader recalled, averted his gaze.

Turning right onto Rams Drive, Schnader noticed that Smyers had turned and was now following her. She thought maybe he was out for a walk and simply headed back to where he started.

At the top of the hill on Rams Drive, he was close enough that she could hear his footsteps. Now, she was worried. As soon as her fear grew, she told herself she was crazy for waking up. It’s an inner dialogue that all women have had at some point in their lives, whether it’s walking to their car at night or driving down a quiet road.

Is that man following me or am I being paranoid?

With the sound of his footsteps getting louder, she made a bold move. She turned to him.

“Oh, you scared me,” she said.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. His voice was sweet.

That’s when she decided to slow down to let Smyers pass her under the bridge.

“And he grabs me from behind and all of a sudden, he’s got my arms and he’s pulling me off the sidewalk and he’s like, ‘You have to come with me. I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. “And I scream for help and then I’m like, ‘Yeah, there’s nobody around.’

She struggled and screamed so loudly that her throat hurt for days.

Although he couldn’t fully free himself, he was wearing sunscreen and was sweaty from running, preventing him from getting a better grip, she said.

A car finally came into view, startling Smyers. He dropped Schnader and ran. She immediately called 911 and told them that even though he was fine, she needed to talk. Someone had tried to take her.

As he described what had happened, he heard sirens approaching.

It took Winston-Salem police two days to find and arrest Smyers. Video surveillance showed him arriving at the scene in a truck and approaching the area where he encountered Schnader. He later confessed to police detectives that he caught Schnader so he could rape her.

Winston-Salem police also linked Smyers to a July 10, 2023, incident in which Smyers attempted to kidnap a female UNC School of the Arts employee.

The August incident was the first of three attacks on women within days of each other in and around the city centre. Six days after Schnader’s attack, a man held a knife to a woman’s throat in the heart of the Innovation neighborhood at 1 p.m. as she tried to get into her car. Twelve days after that, a 77-year-old woman was raped in her shop near Hanes Park on a Sunday morning.

The police found and arrested the culprits in those cases as well.

But for some women, the damage was done. Some women later told Schnader that after hearing about the attack on her, they choose to run other routes or not run alone.

Schnader initially processed the trauma in ways he said he hated. He looked at himself critically and wondered why he stopped following her. Was it because she was wearing a tighter tank top? What if she was a faster runner?

For a while, she dressed in looser running clothes and carried pepper spray. But every man she passed became a potential attacker in her eyes.

“And that’s not how I want to live my life,” she said.

Three days after she was attacked, Schander went for another solo run on the Long Branch Trail and Salem Creek Greenway. He jumped when a passing child shouted something. But he knew it was important to get back on the path and overcome his fear.

She saw each run as a “repeat” or repetition of an action.

Runners practice reps to get stronger; she would use every run to make her braver.

“I have to commit every time I run. I think about him 90 percent of my runs because I’m doing what I was doing when I was attacked,” Schnader said. “So it’s not like I’m perfect and recovered, but I’m doing reps.”

One message Schnader wants women to know is the importance of calling 911. By calling them right away, police were able to find important evidence, such as Smyers’ boot prints and his DNA on her smartwatch .

“There are thousands of reasons why women don’t report, one of them is the feeling of hopelessness, that they won’t find the guy,” Schnader said.

According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 63% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police.

Earlier this month, Smyers pleaded guilty to first-degree kidnapping, sexual assault and possession of a controlled substance on prison premises and was sentenced to up to seven years in prison. He must also register as a sex offender for 30 years.

Schnader, who was there for the sentencing, was mostly pleased with the outcome.

“I want the world to understand that you can’t treat women like dirt and get away with it,” she said.

Now living in Huntersville, Schnader remains committed to running. In a few weeks, he plans to run the Novant Health Charlotte Marathon.

Last week, after recounting the horror of that day, she returned to the patch of dirt under the bridge as runners from a local club passed by.

A little later, soft colors swirled across the evening sky, chimney turbans circled a smokestack in the Innovation Quarter, and Schnader laced up his shoes and went for a run.