On August 16th, 2020, everything changed for WWE Superstar Sonya Deville.
Firmly entrenched in the waning moments of a long-standing storyline with Mandy Rose, who went from her Fire and Desire tag team partner, to her former friend firmly entrenched in a love triangle with Dolph Ziggler and Otis, Deville was supposed to take part in a Hair match with the future leader of Toxic Attraction before Philip A. Thomas II, a deranged fan from Georgia, drove down to Florida and attempted to kidnap the Superstar after years of aggressive online stalking.
Though the attempt, fortunately, failed, with Thomas getting arrested and eventually convicted to 15 years in jail, for Deville, it changed her life forever and left her stuck in a “fight or flight” mindset that persisted well into the future, as she explained in an appearance on Maria Menounos's Youtube show.
“There’s just so many layers to it. First of course, it’s fight or flight, and you’re just in the situation, and you deal with the situation, and that night after the incident, I thought I was gonna go back to 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,” Deville said via Fightful.
“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. I made Mandy slide the dresser in front of the door on the fifteenth floor of this high rise, and paranoia starts to set in. It’s fight or flight, and then it’s shock, and I went into an autopilot of, ‘What needs to be done? What do we have to do?’ I don’t feel first. I do first, and then I feel later. You do what has to be done, and then you feel later, so I didn’t feel the full effect for what had happened for months. I was in full-blown fight-or-flight, I was living in fight-or-flight mode for months, maybe years.”
Finishing out her obligations at the time, with her Hair match turned into a Loser Leaves WWE match for obvious reasons, Deville was away from the company until January of 2021, when she returned on SmackDown as a backstage assistant and eventual rival to Adam Pearce. This time away, however, wasn't about resting, relaxing, and recovering, as Deville was still very much in the weeds of her situation and had to deal with the fact that the world doesn't stop when one experiences trauma.
Sonya Deville explains the lengths she went through to say safe.
Further discussing her traumatic experience with Maria Menounos, Sonya Deville revealed what life was like in the immediate aftermath of her attempted kidnapping and how she actually had to spend time in a safe house while her team waited to see if her attacker would be granted bail.
“I didn’t realize that until, no one knows this either, I went and lived in a safe house for a month because we didn’t know if he was gonna be able to get bail,” Deville said. “It was a 24/7 armed security house. Guys with guns standing at each door, entrance of this home, in a secured location 24/7. It’s just weird. I would go work out at the local LA Fitness, and he would come work out with me. That was a weird phase of my life. I didn’t know what was going on. My mom flew down and stayed with me for as long as she could, but then she has to go back to work. My dad came down right away, of course, then he has to go back to work. It’s this really weird thing where something so messed up happens to you, but then life goes on. So that was something that was hard for me to deal with at that time because I am such a ride-or-die, and I feel my emotions very hard and true, so I’m like, wait a second, I almost had all this taken away from me, and then life just goes on.”
Fortunately for Deville, the rest of her podcast appearance with Menounos explains how she was able to overcome this horrible experience to grow as a person and as a wrestler, with Chelsea Green's tag team partner now in the middle of what she considers the best part of her life and career. Despite the hardships, Deville was able to overcome them, and she is now reaping the benefits of her resilience as a result.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-lqdqCDhqI
