Woman Wakes Up From Coma After 2 Years To Reveal Her Brother As Assailant

Cottageville, West Virginia -- A 51-year-old woman who spent the last two years of her life in a coma after a near-fatal attack woke up to reveal that the attacker was none other than her own brother, police said.

Wanda Palmer, a resident of Cottageville, was found with severe injuries at her home in June 2020. Wanda was reportedly attacked with a weapon believed to be a machete or hatchet. She was found in an "upright position" on her couch and responding officers initially thought she was dead before realizing she had shallow breathing, CNN reported.

"When we got there, to be honest, we thought she was dead," Jackson County Sherriff Ross Mellinger recollected, as reported by NY Post. Wanda has since then been admitted in an unconscious state to a long-term care facility in New Martinsville.

Meanwhile, the investigators could not identify the suspect, as there were no phone records, surveillance footage, or eyewitnesses outside the victim's house during the incident.

"We had a little bit of an idea what happened, but the problem was with the nuts and bolts of the case, we had nothing to go on. There were no eyewitnesses, nobody lived in the home, no surveillance footage, and no cellphone records. There was virtually nothing there to move forward on," Mellinger said.

However, the investigating officers received a call from Wanda's care facility a few weeks ago informing them that she had regained consciousness. Despite suffering severe head injuries from the assault, Wanda could testify by answering yes-or-no questions.

Wanda then revealed that her attacker was her 55-year-old brother, Daniel Palmer III. The police arrested Daniel on charges of attempted murder and malicious wounding on July 15, according to court records.

"The keys to the whole thing lay with the victim herself and with her unable to communicate we were left with nothing. Now lo and behold two years later and boom, she’s awake and able to tell us exactly what happened," Mellinger added. Wanda is now coherent but cannot hold full-length conversations.

Daniel was arraigned in court and his bond was set at $500,000.