In 2020, we learned that Sonya Deville had been involved in a serious incident, which saw a deranged stalker break into her home with a knife, zip ties, duct tape, and mace. He intended to kidnap her, though the police thankfully arrived and put an end to his chilling plan before it could get started.
Reflecting on what happened during a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet, Deville acknowledged that, "I’m the luckiest person on the planet. I tell people all the time, and when I retell the story, people often have the opinion of, 'Wow, you got really lucky.' Because if one thing went differently, me, or Mandy, or both of us would not be here right now."
Asked what she knows about her stalker's motivation, the former WWE Superstar explained, "His whole thing was he wanted to be my boyfriend, I guess. And he was mad that I wasn’t into his gender as a whole, and so he had no shot, and he was angry about it."
Adding that her ex-girlfriend has received "creepy messages" from the man, Deville revealed that her inbox was also full of weird attempted contact, though she didn't see any of it until after the incident took place.
Detailing her and Mandy Rose's escape from their house after Deville caught sight of a man outside in a ski mask, she elaborated on what he told the police his plan was after they caught him.
"They asked him, 'Why were you waiting at the bottom of the staircase?' His response was, 'I thought she went up there, and I know she has MMA training, and I didn’t want to get my ass kicked, so I was gonna wait till she came down and pepper spray her.' I find his messages, and it’s like four years worth of obviously unresponded to scary DMs, all the way to the extent the last message was that night when he was on my patio and it said, 'I’m here, baby girl, I’m finally here. Look outside.'"
"If one thing happened differently, like, had we slept on the couch? He had the door open, the doors right behind the couch. We would have both been maced before we could even wake up," Deville continued. "Had I not set my alarm that night because I was being lazy and just went to sleep, which I’ve done many nights, we would be dead. Like one different move in any scenario, we wouldn’t have made it."
Looking back at what could have been a much worse incident, she concluded, "You’ve heard the stories even with other women wrestlers, but you can’t do anything about it unless, I know it’s weird to say, but like him breaking into my home and actually attempting something allowed me to put him in prison for 15 years."
It sounds like a terrible experience for the MMA fighter, and her stalker is definitely where he belongs. Deville is right that things could have been much worse, and it's very fortunate for her that this scary evening played out the way it did.
You can hear much more from Deville in the player below.