HAMILTON — Jenny Durbin's voice quavers when she talks about her daughter being stabbed. “At least she's alive. She didn't end up like Jill Sexton.”

        Ms. Sexton was the 18-year-old Hamilton High School senior who was killed after she returned an engagement ring in 1999.

        Ms. Durbin said her daughter, Bethany Rochelle Durbin, 22, had broken up with her boyfriend, who is accused of stabbing her multiple times Saturday outside the Kroger store on North Erie Highway.

        Bond was set at $500,000 Monday for Scott Sizemore, 25, of New Miami. He is scheduled for a preliminary hearing Friday in Hamilton Municipal Court.

        While Mr. Sizemore remained in the Butler County jail, Ms. Durbin brought her daughter home from University Hospital. She's convinced that the young woman survived only because a couple of bystanders were brave enough to intervene.

        “We thank them with our whole heart,” Ms. Durbin said. “I'm so grateful those two men were there. If it wouldn't have been for them, he would've killed her.”

        She says Don Sapp and Rick Baker, both of Hamilton, are heroes.

        Mr. Sapp, 40, said he was about to put his groceries into his car trunk when he heard a woman screaming. He saw the man appear to strike the young woman and then saw her fall to the ground.

        “Nobody deserves that,” Mr. Sapp said to himself. “I didn't know he had a weapon at all.”

        Soon Mr. Sapp realized the attacker had a knife — and the woman had apparently been stabbed, not punched.

        Mr. Sapp pulled the at tacker off of the woman, “and he dove right back on her,” Mr. Sapp said.

        So Mr. Sapp got back atop the assailant, and pulled the woman out from underneath him. Mr. Sapp said he and Mr. Baker kept the man pinned down, with his arms behind his back, until police arrived.

        Ms. Durbin said she hadn't yet asked her daughter for details of the incident.

        Ms. Durbin said her daughter had been scared when Mr. Sizemore showed up at her workplace Wednesday.

        A police report said Mr. Sizemore went to the Walgreen's in the 1000 block of High Street, where Ms. Durbin works, and “threatened to kill her by shooting her with a gun.”

        “The victim told the suspect that she didn't want anything to do with him anymore,” the report said.

        Police talked to Ms. Durbin and to Mr. Sizemore after that incident, said Sgt. Thomas E. Kilgour, Hamilton police spokesman. Mr. Sizemore promised he would leave Ms. Durbin alone, and Ms. Durbin indicated she didn't want to take further action against him, Sgt. Kil gour said.

        The couple had lived together some time ago and have a 10-month-old daughter, Ms. Durbin said.

        But police said they were unaware of those circumstances at the time of the Walgreen's incident. If those facts had been known, police could have handled the matter differently under Ohio's domestic violence laws, Sgt. Kilgour said.

        Nevertheless, Sgt. Kilgour said police tried to follow up on the situation. Officers repeatedly tried to reach Ms. Durbin on Friday — the day before the Kroger store incident, he said.

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