AUSTIN, Texas — A 19-year-old Austin man is speaking out after he was attacked with a machete near Auditorium Shores on Tuesday.
Seth Gott spoke with KVUE from his hospital bed on Thursday. He said he visits Auditorium Shores pretty often. On Tuesday morning, he had finished a walk and was headed back to the parking lot to leave in his car. He said he had his earbuds in and his hood up.
Then, all of a sudden, Gott said he felt someone bump into him. The person – later identified by police as 24-year-old Ashton Kaine Talley – fell in front of him.
Gott said he put his hands up, wanting to make sure the man who bumped into him didn't think he was someone else.
"I didn't realize, you know, what was going on until he had turned and I saw the machete in his hand," Gott said. "And even then, it didn't really seem real until he went and swung again and I kind of put out my hand, just instinctively, and when it cut through my hand, that was when it kind of set in what was going on."
An affidavit obtained by KVUE stated that Gott sustained more than a dozen cuts all over his body, including a large cut across his back, an almost complete amputation of his left hand, multiple cuts on fingers of his right hand and a large cut across his jaw near one of his ears.
"It was probably a minute-long altercation. And during that minute, there was almost no pause in the swinging," Gott said. "He hit me maybe 10 or 15 times, but he swung a lot more than that. It was pretty relentless, which was, you know, so terrifying. He didn't say anything or make any faces, but he did not stop or back away from me."
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Witnesses said as Gott attempted to get away, Talley chased after him. Gott fell to the ground, and witnesses said Talley continued to strike him with the machete.
"As I was running, he chased me down like his life depending on, you know, ending mine," Gott said. "It was definitely scary to see the level of tenacity he had at ending my life. It was pretty terrifying."
The affidavit states that multiple Good Samaritans applied pressure to Gott's injuries as he lay incapacitated and losing a large amount of blood.
"Even in the moment, there was this immediate sense of community, almost," Gott said, adding, "I can't thank any of those people enough. Without their help, I absolutely would not have made it ... Even though there was this one person who really wanted to end my life, there were 20 other people there who were doing everything in their power to save it."
Talley was arrested a short distance away from Auditorium Shores following the attack. He faces two charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon along with one count of evading arrest. He remains in the Travis County Jail without bond.
Gott said he has already made a lot of progress in his recovery, but most of his overall recovery process will be getting his hands back to their normal level of functioning. He said it will be three to six months before he can get them working at full capacity again.
He has already had one surgery, with a second scheduled for Friday.