Dad speaks out following knife attack on his son
By Greta Goede
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BELLEVUE, Nebraska (KMTV) — “I think I broke down and just started thanking the man upstairs because if it would have been any lower or he wouldn’t have been looking out, we’d be having a whole different conversation.”
Casey Hillman says he was up late into the night thinking about the attack on his son and how an inch could have made the difference between life and death. He spoke with KMTV’s Greta Goede in an exclusive sit down interview to discuss how his son, Cyler, 3, is recovering and his reaction to learning the woman police say kidnapped and attacked him at an Omaha Walmart had previously faced charges for violent crimes.
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“His three main concerns, according to the officers were Dad a band-aid and to go home in that order as soon as this happened until I walked in the ER room and then,” father Casey Hillman said during the interview.
“He sat in my lap till till they took him to surgery and that was the first time he cried during that whole ordeal because he had to leave me. I think it’s been just as rough, if not rougher on me than it has been on him till this morning he, we were going to get his boots and he told me he didn’t want to go outside because it was scary outside,” Hillman said.
Q: Do you just want to — talk a little bit about kind of what was running through your mind yesterday. I know you said you were at a job interview.
A: I, well, and I didn’t even know.
Like they didn’t give me a whole lot of details. The officer called and she just told me who she was and said she was in an ambulance with my son. There was a really bad incident at Walmart and he was hurt pretty severe and Children’s Connect uploaded a photo of the side of his face and when I, when I seen that I about.
I damn near couldn’t see driving the rest of the way and I broke probably 6 or 7 traffic laws going, if not more, and I got there and then they explained what happened and I, I think I broke down and just started thanking the man upstairs because if it would have been any lower or he wouldn’t have been looking out, we’d be having a whole different conversation.
Q: How did it make you feel hearing that she had priors?
A: I had a lot of resentment, a lot of anger, and I turned a new chapter where I started going to the Bible a lot when I get like that, and I had to last night because it made my blood boil, skin crawl, and I think it was 1:30, 2 o’clock before I even went to sleep last night. But that kind of thing I think is where our system needs to do better so things like this don’t continue to happen. I don’t know what it’s like to lose a kid, but this is pretty damn close, and it’s, I’m still pretty rattled. It’s been, been rough.
He definitely cowboyed up. I don’t think I could have got a gash like that and not been crying.
He’s, he’s our kid with no fear. I mean, jumps off of the sofas and he tests the limits all the time, just like that.
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