Continued: Burnsville man refuses to let night of terror ruin his life

Paul Traub was stabbed 20 times, threatened with death and walked through a wall of fire -- all in a night of terror last month in his Burnsville home in a crime yet unsolved by police.

Despite what was done to him during what police say was a random home invasion -- including being doused with mouthwash to see if he was still alive -- Traub says he isn't letting what happened define him.

"I didn't feel scared at any point of it and I'm no superhero human ... . My faith got me through it, and that's what allowed me to get through it without the fear and beyond it," said Traub, 52. "It's just stuff that happened in the past, and that's where it's staying."

Traub recounted his experiences in an interview on Thursday, the same day that Crime Stoppers announced a $1,000 reward for information and that police released descriptions of one of the two suspects, who remain at large.

Two men broke into Traub's Burnsville home on May 11, stabbing him -- 17 times in the back, twice in the head and once in the cheek-- and setting seven fires in his home before fleeing in his car. He was hospitalized for a day and a half and is living in an apartment for several months until his home, which was heavily damaged by smoke, is habitable again.

Police said Traub told them he did not know his attackers, who may have been attracted to his home in the fourplex by his car parked in an open garage. The incident prompted his town home association to have residents meet with police about ways to prevent crime and look into starting a block-captain program.

A rude awakening

Around 4 a.m., Traub heard a noise in the living room and instinctively got out of bed to see what was going on. One of the suspects saw Traub coming and tried to hide, but Traub confronted him and told him to leave. Traub slipped away to his bedroom in hopes of using his phone to call 911, but the first suspect followed him and refused to leave the doorway.

Without his glasses on, Traub could not see well in the dark and resigned himself to sitting on the edge of his bed, with the suspect still watching him.

"I didn't even see the other guy come around this guy and hit me," Traub said. "As I got hit a couple of times in the head and face, I was falling on the floor, bleeding quite a lot, and couldn't figure out why I was bleeding, because I thought I just got punched."

The armed invader slashed Traub once in the face and twice in the head; the tip of the knife broke and lodged into his skull, behind his right ear. It is still there; doctors determined that it would cause more harm than good to dig it out.

"So he tells me; 'You gotta pick A or B. And you pick the right answer, you live, and you pick the wrong answer, you die,'" Traub remembered. "I was laying there, I thought I was conscious through all of it, but looking back on it, I probably wasn't."

The perpetrators took mouthwash from Traub's bathroom and poured it on his face to see if he was still alive. When Traub opened his eyes to see what they were splashing on him, he heard one of the suspects tell the other "you gotta be a man, you gotta kill him."

After a slight hesitation, the intruder stabbed Traub in the back 17 times with the blunt knife; the point was still imbedded in his head. "We're thinking the knife didn't go in as deep as it could have because the tip was missing," he said.

A wall of flames

The next time Traub opened his eyes, he was on the floor. His bed was in flames.

"The bed was between me and the door to get out," he said. "The fire wasn't just on the bed, but had gone across where I had to get out, and was on my dresser as well now, and there was kind of a small wall of fire between me and the exit."

The suspects had already fled, but only after disconnecting his bedroom phone from the wall jack and disabling the smoke detector. He realized he had one of three choices: stay on the floor of his bedroom, jump out the window or run through the fire to escape from the house.

He chose to run for it, and found his way to his neighbor's house.

The aftermath

Burnsville Police Sgt. Dan Carlson said they are still analyzing evidence to gain leads on the intruders. He said police hope the reward and descriptions will help get movement in the case.

"We're hoping that we can get some type of response from someone that might have been out at that early hour," he said.

Police describe one of the suspects as black, 15 to 16 years old, about 5 feet 6 inches tall and having a chubby build. He also had a red and black backpack with the logo of an unknown Alabama college, and his first name is possibly "Marvin." Police said the description of the second suspect was vague, but that he was a black male who was older than the other suspect.

Traub said that his neighbors are more conscious now of locking garages and locking doors.

"They've got a more heightened awareness of people walking in the neighborhood," he said. "In a sense, it's a good thing ... [but] it's a shame that we have to resort to things like that."

The suspects gained access to Traub's house because he forgot to close the garage door before going to sleep on that Saturday night. Traub's neighborhood, west of Interstate 35W just off Kenwood Trail, is mostly single-family homes and has a relatively low crime rate.

Carlson said a home invasion is "an unusual event for any neighborhood in Burnsville."

Traub plans to take things one step at a time. Before the incident, he was between jobs, and his biggest concerns are finding a new one and dealing with bills from the hospital and property damages.

After the incident, his pastor asked him to speak to church members about his ordeal.

"One of the things that I said was: In a couple of minutes, I experienced the worst mankind has to offer and then the very best that mankind has to offer," he said about the people who helped him: neighbors, friends, police, doctors and nurses. "It's a lot nicer seeing the good side of people."

Staff writers Paul Walsh and Suzanne Ziegler contributed to this report.

Patrick Lee • 612-673-7452