A woman stopped to help a 16-year-old boy. Then she realised something was very, very wrong.

Content warning: This post contains accounts of violence and sexual assault that may be distressing. 

For this Salt Lake City woman, running was just a part of her daily routine.

But on March 19, when the 50-year-old mother jogged along the same path she had used a hundred times before – everything changed.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was running when she stopped to aid a teenage boy who looked like he needed help

Standing by the path with his scooter, 16-year-old Rainier Craig Peterson asked to borrow the runner’s phone.

But after letting the young boy make a call, she soon realised that something was very, very wrong.

There was no one on the other end of the line.

The fake phone call was all just a part of Peterson’s disturbing plan.

The woman tried to grab her phone back, but in just seconds, the boy had dragged her down and off the path into a ditch.

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Telling her “you will die today”, the 16-year-old reportedly punched and strangled the woman as she struggled to remain conscious.

“I was so quickly passing out and so desperate for air,” the unnamed woman told The Salt Lake Tribune.

“And again, realising, ‘I cannot believe this is how my kids are going to lose their mother. I cannot believe this is how it ends for me’.”

The teen then sexually assaulted the woman a number of times, threatening to slit her throat with a glass bottle he had smashed if she resisted his violent attack.

After two failed attempts to escape the boy’s violent grip, the woman finally escaped, finding a passer-by who called the police for her.