A 49 year old Waialua woman says she struggled with her attacker for more than a half hour early Wednesday morning as the man pinned her down on her bed and held a knife to her throat.

38 year old Mark Stephen Panela was charged with burglary, kidnapping and attempted rape after allegedly breaking into the woman’s home on Waialua Beach Road. Patrol officers arrested Panela inside the victim’s home after responding to a phone call of a burglary in progress.

The victim, whose identity is being withheld by Khon2, says a few seconds after her alarm clock rang at 5 a.m. Panela was on top of her. “I felt a knife blade on my throat and he started to suffocate me.”

She said Panela grew more violent every time she struggled or tried to escape his firm grasp. "He started to use ropes and he yelled at me not to yell and I yelled out once really loud, 'help.'"

As her attacker tried to muffle her screams with a pillow, the woman made a move for the man’s knife and managed to wedge it between the bedroom wall and the headboard of her bed. “He couldn’t reach it,” she said.

The victim’s cries for help were eventually answered by a neighbor who lives directly behind her home and whose bedroom faces hers. "He's actually the one that called police,” the victim said, “my lifeguard Steve."

Steven Keitzer is an actual City & County of Honolulu lifeguard and is no stranger to helping victims of crime. In July of 1996 Keitzer was honored by then Honolulu Police Chief Michael Nakamura after he caught a robbery suspect who had jumped into the ocean in Waikiki. At the time of the award Nakamura said HPD had never had an awardee like Keitzer, who had received so “many letters of appreciation and certificates of merit.”

Although Keitzer shied away from talking to a Khon2 camera crew about his phone call to police, Panela’s alleged victim says her lifeguard neighbor probably saved her life.

"Steve, my guardian angel Steve," she said.

The victim says her nose was slashed by the knife during the struggle with Panela and rope burns to her arms were clearly visible. “I feel even if you're a tiny woman you don't just go limp and paralyze. You fight, fight, fight until you can't fight anymore.”

Police say Panela is homeless but frequents the Waialua area. His bail was set at $50,000.

Andrew may be reached at apereira@khon2.com or ph. 591-4263.