She did provide one possible clue, however, by suggesting that the man may have been someone she knew from work or was possibly a customer at the sunglass kiosk where she worked.Ī few years later, in 2016, Brittani told her family that for some reason the name “Justin” kept coming to her mind but she didn’t know why. Under hypnosis, Brittani was able to describe her attacker, referring to him as a tall man with a light complexion and spikey hair, but she was unable to provide a name. Gonterman was committed to solving it, looking into 75 different men provided by the family as potential suspects and encouraging Brittani to undergo hypnosis in 2014 to try to recover memories she may have suppressed from her attack. “She’s been there with me on every medical appointment, every surgery, it’s like she’s somebody who I look up to very much so, she’s like my best friend now,” Brittani told “Dateline.”īut the attack had also caused significant damage to Brittani’s memory and she was unable to remember most of her high school career - including who had attacked her that fateful morning.įor years, the case would remain unsolved even after a new detective, Jodi Gonterman, took over the case. Lori Wright, a neuropsychologist who worked with the teen, told “Dateline: Secrets Uncovered” Brittani was often “confused” and cried a lot, but through cognitive behavioral therapy - a process that reteaches the brain through repetition - Brittani began to regain her abilities.īrittani herself, who was left permanently deaf in one ear and blind in her left eye, credits her mother’s determination with helping her regain a new life. “She didn’t realize why she couldn’t walk, why she couldn’t eat, why she had to learn all these things all over again,” Diane said.ĭr. Still terrified the unknown attacker might return, Diane moved Brittani and two of her sisters to Texas, where they found her an intense rehabilitation program. Through three tense months, the family took turns sitting at her bedside until doctors told the family it looked like Brittani would survive.įive months after the attack, she was released from the hospital. “We talked to her and she’d blink her eyes and smile, but we knew at that point, there was a lot of paralysis,” her mom, Diane, said. Brittani’s ear canal had been crushed, leaving her deaf in one ear and her optic nerve was severed during the violent blows to her head. While in the ICU, a portion of her brain was removed and she fought a battle with meningitis.
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Without an obvious suspect in the case, Morales decided to re-examine Brittani’s life in the months leading up to the brutal attack.įull Episode Watch More 'Dateline' Episodes In Our Free Appīack at the hospital, Brittani’s family was terrified the attacker would strike again and the teen was admitted to the hospital under an assumed name. Morales believed it could be the clue to break open the case, but after uploading the DNA into the national CODIS database, a database run by the FBI of DNA profiles gathered from across the country, there were no hits. After he jumped out of the dining room window, the attacker had also left behind his DNA in one small droplet of blood found on a shard of glass from the broken window. The attacker had left behind a bloody shovel, knife, and roll of duct tape, but he had also unintentionally left behind another critical clue. “Once we were able to go inside, you could see it was pretty violent,” he told “Dateline” reporter Andrea Canning. An unknown attacker had hit Brittani so hard with a shovel it crushed the left part of her skull. Albuquerque Police Detective Jason Morales was shocked by the “very brutal” nature of the attack.
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