A New York City mother hiking the Grand Canyon had her throat slit by a convicted felon who should have still been behind bars — and every official who let him walk free owes this family an answer.

Alexis Rowan, 27, was eight miles into a ten-mile birthday hike on the Havasupai Reservation in Arizona last Wednesday when she asked a local tribe member for directions to the gift shop. Taylor Nardo Paya, 29, came up behind her and slashed her neck open, then punched her repeatedly and tried to drag her away. Ring camera footage captured the assault.

"I felt my neck, I'm like, 'oh my God, I'm going to die,'" Rowan told ABC7. "I can't die like this, this is not the way. I have my kids to go home to."

Rowan survived because a nearby woman heard her screaming and opened her door. She needed ten stitches in her neck and three in her left hand. Her mother, Tricia Rowan, described the attack in a Havasupai Falls Facebook group as a "vicious, violent UNPROVOKED attack that almost took my daughter's life."

"Taylor Paya slit her throat, punched her repeatedly, pulled her hair, threw her to the ground & tried dragging her to who knows where!" Tricia Rowan wrote.

Here is the part that should enrage every American: Paya was already a convicted violent felon with a history of preying on women. Court documents show that in December 2015, Paya robbed a woman outside a home where she was staying, admitted to ripping off several layers of her clothing, threw her to the ground, and punched her in the face and side. He pleaded guilty in September 2016 and received a five-year prison sentence. The court also ordered him to undergo sex offender treatment and counseling — an order that tells you everything about the nature of that earlier crime.

So a man convicted of a violent, sexually motivated attack on a woman got a five-year sentence. Even assuming he served every day of it, he would have been out by 2021. The system that sentenced him apparently believed five years was sufficient for a predator who rips women's clothes off and beats them. Now another woman has nearly died because of that calculation.

Paya was tracked down and arrested the day after the attack when reservation police pinged Rowan's stolen cell phone. Because the assault occurred on tribal land, Paya faces a federal charge of assault with deadly weapons, according to FOX10.

The New York Post reported the details of Paya's prior record and the current charges. What remains unanswered — and what no official has yet been made to answer — is who approved Paya's release, whether he completed his court-ordered sex offender treatment, and whether any parole board or prosecutor's office flagged him as the threat he clearly was. A five-year sentence for a violent sexual predator was a choice. Releasing him was a choice. Alexis Rowan is living with the consequences of both.

The question isn't just why Paya attacked again. The question is which officials decided a man who rips women's clothing off and beats them was safe to walk free — and whether anyone will be held accountable for that decision before the next woman isn't lucky enough to have a neighbor hear her screams.