In 1997, Sandra Sully was attacked at gunpoint. In the aftermath, there was one thing that 'saved' her.

On an otherwise nondescript November night in 1997, Sandra Sully pulled into her own apartment building’s car park.

There was a man there waiting for her. He had a gun in hand and a balaclava covering his face.

Recalling the incident in a recent interview with Stellar, Sully recalled the one thing that might have saved her that night.

"It did save me. I really believe that. I had a dream as a young woman about a really frightening experience: that I would be trying to scream and nothing would come out. At the time, I remember screaming, and I was shocked that it was coming out," she said.

Sandra Sully was attacked when she arrived home after work in November 1997. Image: Getty.

Neighbours immediately contacted the police because Sully "didn't stop screaming" while she was being attacked.

"He ran off. That was the only thing that saved me. I was lucky. Because he had a gun, balaclava and handcuffs. So he meant business," she explained.

Sully first spoke to Stellar and opened up about the ordeal for the first time in 2017 — 20 years after the assault. She recalled the man grabbing her by the shoulders, then her hair. She did not know who he was, what he wanted, or where he came from.

“I started fighting,” she told the magazine. “He put a gun to my head.”

As she fought, they both fell to the ground. He held the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.

"I thought, 'Bloody hell, I am going to die.'" Image: Getty.

“I thought, ‘Bloody hell, I am going to die. I am going to die on the floor of a car park. This is it.’”

The gun, it so happens, didn't fire.

“He was aware he couldn’t shut me up. I kept fighting and, at some point, he just decided he had to run.”

As he ran away, she caught a glimpse of what he looked like. He had blonde hair, and she looked for him for a very long time. He was never caught, though police theorise it was an attempted abduction.

"I am not convinced he was a stalker. I think he had cased the joint and thought I was get-able.

"It was at least 10 years before I was ready to talk about it to anyone other than my family and probably 15 years before I felt like I could put it behind me," she shared. "I still don’t like to be surprised. If someone makes a loud noise, I jump. I am always aware in a car park. You realise life can be snuffed out in an instant."

She said that it was only, almost exactly 20 years later, that she felt she could talk about it and share her experience.

In her recent interview, Sully revealed that despite the trauma of the event, resulting in her hiring security for a decade after, she only took three or four weeks off work at the time.

"I needed to get back to work," she said. "Because I was doing night shifts, I couldn't be home alone. I had a security detail for 10 years every night when I got home and that gave me real comfort."

For Sully, work served as a form of stability in her life, during a time when she felt "alone" and "very vulnerable."

"My marriage broke down not long after all of that, which was life's s**t sandwich, which happens sometimes, [but] you've just got to work it out," she said.

"I needed my job because I felt very alone and very vulnerable, and it was the one steady thing in my life that I could rely on — as much as you can rely on being a journalist at a TV network."

Now, 35 years later, Sully looks back and is thankful for her work and how it got her through the incredibly difficult time in her life.

This article was originally published in November 2017 and has since been updated with new information.

Feature Image: Getty.