A Missouri woman is recovering after she was brutally assaulted by a 10 year-old boy while she was trying to be a Good Samaritan.

On March 26, Debbie Joy was in Jefferson City to take her sister to a doctor’s appointment.

“It’s a long four hour day for me every time I have done that,” she explained.

As the sisters were heading home, they saw what they thought was two young children being kicked out of a car on the side of the highway. Debbie, who is a minister, saw the boy throwing rocks at the car as it drove away, and she felt the need to do something to help.

“We can’t leave those kids there,” Debbie remembers saying. “We have to go pick up the kids.”

Debbie pulled over a short distance from the boy, and as she got closer to him, she realized that the other person was his mother rather than another child. She also noticed that the boy was continuing to throw rocks at his mom.

“She was obviously running from him,” Debbie said. “I didn’t realize that coming into the situation.”

It turns out that the mother was running from the boy after he threatened to kill her, and he soon threatened Debbie as well.

“Are you okay? Is everything okay? Do you need a ride somewhere? I notice you all got kicked out of the vehicle,” Debbie said she asked the boy. “That’s when he turned around and he glared at me and said ‘You get out of here you ‘blankety-blank’ or I’m going to kill you.'”

It was then that the boy picked up a two-by-four and swung it like a baseball bat, hitting Debbie in her head. She blacked out when she got hit and woke up in the hospital, where she learned that she had a cut in her head that was so deep it went all the way to her skull. She needed tons of stitches for the wound and is still suffering from a concussion one month later.

At first, Debbie did not want to press charges against the child, telling police that “he’s only a little boy.” However, when they told her that he had previous issues with the law, Debbie decided to go through with pressing charges in the hopes that it would inspire the boy to turn his life around.

The boy was initially held in a juvenile detention center, but he has since been moved to foster care. Debbie has been in touch with his foster parents, who say that he has been excelling in school and would like to meet with Debbie to apologize for what he did to her.

Despite what he did to her, Debbie has since forgiven the boy.

“His mom’s life was spared that night, the Lord spared my life, and now he’s getting help,” she said through tears. “That, to me, is ok. The Lord is just going to continue to heal me.”

Find out more in the video below.