TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — A Tampa Bay area mother is sharing her story of survival after she was stabbed 13 times on July 17.

“Honestly thought I was going to die there,” Crystal Bresnahan said. “I couldn’t breathe. I could feel my lungs filling up with blood … It was terrifying.”

July 17 was the day that changed Crystal’s life forever.

Moments before the attack, she said she was talking to her husband.

“We had an extensive talk about how I’m not coming home,” Crystal said. “That was something he’d ask me every day, ‘Please come home, please come home.’

“I said, ‘I’m never coming home’ … He just kind of played it like, ‘I’m really hurt, and I would like to see the kids; it’s going to make me feel better.'”

Crystal said Michael asked her if he could take their children to a park and she agreed. She never imagined what would happen next as she went to give her kids a kiss goodbye.

“The minute I got to the other side of the car, and I grabbed my son’s face to pull him in for a kiss, I felt the knife in my back,” Crystal said. “He said, ‘Get in the car and don’t scream.'”

Crystal said she screamed anyways.

“As he was stabbing me in the front seat, my 6-year-old son, Michael, said, ‘Dad, stop! You’re killing my mom,'” Crystal said.

She fought back, saying she knew he’d kill her if she got in the car.

“When he realized he wasn’t going to get that door closed, he just started stabbing me,” Crystal said.

She said the knife went in and out over and over again.

“He pulled me out of the car, stabbed me some more and threw me on the ground,” Crystal recalled. “(Then, he) drove off.”

She remembers walking 100 yards with 13 stab wounds.

“Blood everywhere,” she recalled. “There wasn’t a piece of my body that wasn’t completely soaked in blood.”

Crystal said a man saw her and ran toward her after two people drove past.

“When I knew someone was coming to help, it’s like my body just shut down and I just fell,” she said.

Investigators said Crystal was allegedly attacked by the same man who later pulled out an AK-47 and started shooting at police on Florida Ave. 18 officers returned fire on Michael Bresnahan in an effort to protect innocent bystanders, according to officers.

They later found him dead inside the car from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Now, Crystal is out of the hospital recovering.

“It’s really painful,” she said. “I’ve still got stitches all over my body, and I can’t use this hand.”

Crystal said she’s had multiple surgeries, received several stitches and doctors had to put her intestines back into her body.

“I was stabbed in my liver, my colon, my lungs a couple times,” she said. “This arm was shredded. It was bad. They had to put it back together.”

When asked what she would say to Michael, Crystal said:

“You failed; I’m still here. I won; I get to live my life in peace … I don’t have to look over my shoulder anymore.”