Kelly Herron Defeated Her Sex Offender and Launched a Movement
And her top 6 safety tips for women runners.
Kelly Herron was preparing for her first 26.2-mile race, the Chicago Marathon, in March 2017. Kelly Herron was four miles into a 10-mile marathon training run in Seattle’s popular Golden Gardens Park when she decided to take a bathroom break. She noticed something was wrong while drying her hands. She turned around to see a man hiding in one of the stalls.
Gary Steiner, a registered sex offender in Arizona, was hiding in the bathroom and attacked her.
Just three weeks before the incident, Herron’s employer, RealSelf, had brought in Fighting Chance Seattle to do a workshop for employees. While many victims of assault or attempted assault do not or cannot fight back, Herron decided to use everything she learned in that class to defend herself as her attacker pinned her down on the floor of a bathroom stall.
Herron told ABC America: “He immediately took me down to the ground, hit both my knees and legs, and then it was a fight on the bathroom floor. I just kept screaming, not today mother fucker.”
