“He was walking on the opposite side of the street from me and started laughing when I hiccuped,” said the woman, who isn’t being identified in order to protect her identity. “He asked me if I was going to the dark park.

“I thought he asked me because he was concerned for my safety.”

The woman turned down his offer and continued walking through Stoddard Park. Within an instant, the man attacked her, she said.

“He assaulted me and hit me across the face with a gun, slitting my face,” she said. “I needed eight stitches. A girl found me in the park and called 911.”

The woman, an MSU dietetics senior, didn’t know the man who attacked and sexually assaulted her.

The suspect stole the woman’s purse and fled.

“I will be a senior, and I’ve walked home by myself all the time,” she said. “I’ve been cautionary, but it only takes one time.”

She later filed a report with the East Lansing Police Department, detailing her attack. Police were able to locate her phone on Burcham Drive, the woman said.

Ted Amundsen, a 2007 MSU graduate, was assaulted July 19 while walking home with his roommate after leaving Rick’s American Caf