Spokane Valley mother recalls terror of ex-boyfriend’s attack

On Wednesday, Sapphire Mattson and her boyfriend did what they normally do: They went to Walmart, bought all of the ingredients for a homemade pasta dinner and spent a few happy hours toiling away in front of a simmering pot.

Then, all at once, the pleasant evening broke to pieces. Sonny Cannella, the man Mattson had been living with for two months in her Spokane Valley home, suddenly and violently snapped, she said.

The result of that afternoon, which ended in a bloody scene that neighbors and friends described as “worse than a horror movie,” left the young mother with severe head trauma and her 10-year-old son in terror. Days later, Mattson still sported a black eye, severely swollen face, and rows of stitches on her forehead. The extent of her head injury is not yet known.

But the thing that keeps Mattson up at night isn’t just the pain from her injuries; it’s the question, she said, of what turned the man she loved into a monster.

“I think the shock is going to be here for a while,” Mattson said, while surrounded by friends during an interview at her home Sunday. “It’s so unbelievable that he would do that to me.”

The confusion all started while Mattson was revisiting her grandmother’s secret recipe for spaghetti sauce, which she said takes about four hours to cook. While she was moving back and forth from the kitchen to the living room, she said Cannella started acting strange, almost like he was a different person.

“All of the sudden his face changes, and it’s not the nice Sonny,” Mattson said. She said she asked him what was wrong, and if he was feeling OK. She told him to walk her dog Wendy, a tiny Chihuahua. Things seemed better after that.

But once he returned from outside, they started talking again in the living room. That’s when she could smell her sauce burning, she said.

As she got up to stir the pot, she said, Mattson grabbed her by the back of the head and slammed it into the corner of the kitchen counter just above her right eye, knocking her out.

“After that, the only thing I remember is me laying on the floor of the kitchen, looking at the trash can, opening my right eye because I couldn’t open my left eye, and I see blood squirting across the floor,” she said. “And I hear him laughing.”

Mattson said instinct kicked in and she immediately played dead, as if, she said, a wild animal was hovering over her. When Cannella eventually left the kitchen before rummaging through her purse, the mother crawled to her 10-year-old son Quintin’s room, calling “It’s really bad, it’s really bad, call 911” as best she could.

According to the Spokane Valley Police Department, Quintin told officers his mother was beaten with a baseball bat and needed help. He told police there was blood everywhere.

Upon arrival, medics found Mattson bleeding profusely and exhibiting symptoms consistent with severe head trauma. She was taken to Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center, where she stayed for two nights.

“If Quintin had gone into shock and couldn’t call the cops, I wouldn’t be here,” she said of her son. “He really is a hero.”

Cannella, who fled the scene by the time police and medics arrived, was found in the alleyway behind the residence, lying on the ground, according to police. He was taken into to a local hospital and then booked into Spokane County Jail. His bond was set at $60,000 Thursday.

He has no prior criminal history in Washington, but he does have an outstanding warrant in Wisconsin for resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and probation violation.

He could not be reached for comment Sunday.

While Mattson rested in the hospital, her neighbor and good friend Amanda Richey volunteered to clean up the blood pooled in the kitchen sink and smeared on the walls, carpet and furniture. Richey said it was like something out of a horror movie.

“But with what she had been through, I knew she couldn’t come back home to that,” Richey said.

She also set up a GoFundMe campaign to help pay some of Mattson’s medical bills.

“I will always be grateful to her,” Mattson said of Richey.

Mattson, who said Cannella moved to Spokane just a few months prior, said what happened Wednesday was completely out of character for the man she knew and loved. She said they weren’t even arguing when he snapped. Quintin didn’t report hearing anything from his room, either, which is down the hall from the kitchen and living room area.

She has theories: that an earlier history of undiagnosed mental illness suddenly surfaced, or that he had taken some of her prescription anti-anxiety medication, bottles of which she found open and empty near a crawl space where she also found his hat and one of her vape pens.

In their initial report, police said that Cannella had drunk nicotine oil. Mattson later said it was more likely hemp oil.

But rather than dwell on that too much, she’s just thankful she’s alive and that her son is unharmed.

“I’m shocked I’m alive,” she said. “I’m going to be really honest with you, I’m shocked.”