In an interview with Maria Menounos on her podcast, Sonya Deville opened up about her state of mind following an attempted kidnapping at her home in 2020.
The incident in August of that year, in which Phillip Thomas broke into her home with a knife, zip ties, and duct tape following threatening messages on social media, left Deville dealing with trauma in the aftermath.
Thomas was sentenced to 15 years in jail, with 15 years of probation, after the judge accepted a plea aggrement in which the defendant pleaded guilty to the charges of attempted kidnapping, aggravated stalking, and armed burglary.
Speaking on what she went through that night, Devile told Menounos:
“That night after the incident, I thought I was gonna go back into the house and sleep there, because I was stubborn and I was in shock, and I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know left from right at that point, and then the sun goes down, and I’m uncontrollably shaking, and I’m in a hotel room under an alias name because I’m so paranoid that even though he’s arrested, he’s somehow gonna find me, and I have the dresser pushed up against the door.”
She would go on to say the full effect of the incident didn’t hit her initially and she was “living in fight or flight mode for months, maybe years.”
After taking time off after SummerSlam 2020, Deville returned to WWE in January 2021 as an authority figure, before returning to in-ring action on the October 15, 2021 edition of SmackDown.
Source: Wrestling Observer
The interview in full can be seen below.