THIS photo shows the terrible injuries suffered by a teen whose face and head was hacked 46 times by an man wielding a machete.
Priyanka Kumari was walking home from school when Neel Mehta allegedly jumped out on her and swung the weapon at her hands and head.
The 18-year-old, from Apex, north Carolina, is currently recovering in hospital and doctors have told her and her family her hands may never work properly again.
But despite her devastating injuries, her father Pankaj Kumar said it was his daughter who was giving everyone strength.
He told CBS News: “She is completely changed in her face. I could not recognize her.”
Priyanka is being treated in Dukes Hospital, her father added: “She used her hands to protect herself and suffered a lot of fractures of bones in her fingers.
"Tendons were cut. Veins were cut. A lot of muscles and skin were taken it off.”
Kumar went on to explain Priyanka was keeping the family together: “She is holding us together. She’s giving us a lot of strength to cope with this."
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He said his daughter believed she was going to be killed: “She said at one point ‘I felt like I am going to die.’ She told him ‘let me die peacefully’ but he did not have any kind of concern.
“He stomped her by his feet. He jumped on her body and started to cut her throat – to cut her head off.”
Mehta, who carried out the vicious attack, remains in jail on a $2 million bond.
Kumar recorded his daughter's account of the attack as she lay recovering in her hospital bed and then sent it to the police.
Kumari has spoken to her father about Mehta two weeks before the attack, and had raised concerns about his behaviour, saying that she should maybe look into getting a restraining order.
But her father said it wouldn't help: “This kind of person cannot be stopped by a piece of paper. It’s too dangerous for him to live in a society freely."
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help Priyanka to pay for her recovery and the hospital bills she and the family now face.
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