Ashley Lyon, the Valrico teenager found stabbed after authorities chased and caught the sex offender she was traveling with, is now coping with a blood clot and remains hospitalized in Louisiana.
“I pray that this is it and she can recover now,” her mother, Michelle Lyon, wrote in an update posted Tuesday on Facebook. “My daughter has been through enough. Thanks for all the prayers.”
Ashley, 16, who suffers from bipolar disorder, went missing on June 11. She was traveling with registered sex offender Steven Myers, 41, of Plant City, whom she knew from the neighborhood and had been exchanging hundreds of text messages.
A week after she left, Ashley was seen with Myers by Fawn Domingue, a cashier at a truck stop outside Baton Rouge, La.
“I just saw her face and was like, ‘Oh my God,’” said Domingue, 28, who was filling in for a coworker at the Tiger Truck Stop near Baton Rouge when the pair came in June 18.
Her tip touched off a 40-mile police chase down Interstate 10, authorities said. It culminated in Lafayette when Myers stopped after riding on the sparking rims of four blown tires, climbed on the truck hood and yelled for police to kill him before stabbing himself, authorities said.
He was attacked by a police dog and shocked with a Taser before officers arrested him.
Police then found a wounded Ashley in the disabled truck’s cab. Myers had apparently stabbed her eight times in the front of her torso and twice in the back.
Myers has twice been convicted of child molestation in Georgia and was required to register his address with local authorities.
Ashley’s father, Roger Lyon, said he was relieved the teenager had been found.
“My daughter is strong; I know she’s strong-willed,” he said. “I know she’ll pull through this.”
On Facebook, Michelle Lyon wrote that Ashley was on a ventilator until June 20.
“Since she hasn’t had her meds in so long for bipolar, she is hallucinating as well and having panic attacks,” her mother wrote June 23. “The only good thing is that she doesn’t remember accident or stabbing. I will talk to her about it when she is stable and better.”
Tuesday morning, she wrote that Ashley was undergoing surgery to remove a blood clot from her leg.
Myers was released from a hospital last week and booked in the Lafayette Parish Corrections Center on charges of attempted first-degree murder and aggravated criminal property damage. He faces additional charges in Hillsborough County.
Follow updates on Ashley on a Facebook page created to find her when she went missing, called Help Find Ashley Lyon.