Twitch streamer Holle Knoll said her abusive ex had “evil” in his eyes when he showed up at her new boyfriend’s apartment with a shotgun and opened fire on them – hitting her in the leg before wounding two responding officers and taking his own life in a violent shootout.
“The look in his eyes when I saw him at the door, he just looked so evil,” Knoll, 29, told The Post through tears, just two days after the terrifying incident at her boyfriend Hunter Avallone’s West Virginia apartment Friday.
Their ordeal went viral after Avallone, a popular YouTuber with over half a million subscribers, posted footage from inside the apartment showing Knoll struggling to stem the flow of blood from her leg while 29-year-old Conrad Carriker allegedly pounded on their door and exchanged thundering gunfire with the Martinsburg Police Department.
Knoll, better known online as Holle Peno, had traveled across the country from Washington days before to stay with Avallone after finally escaping the home she shared with Carriker, who she said had been frighteningly abusive throughout their 11-year relationship.
But her horrors were far from over.
Shortly after arriving in West Virginia, Knoll discovered Apple AirTags concealed in her luggage, which she said Carriker openly admitted to planting so he could find out where Avallone lived.
“Tell him I’ll see him soon,” Carriker allegedly responded by text message shared online when Knoll confronted him about the trackers. She said Carriker had begun threatening to kill Avallone as their relationship developed from a simple friendship over the previous three months.
Five days after that discovery, Avallone received a call from his landlord saying a man with a suitcase had been loitering around the building trying to get in and claiming to be friends with him. Fearing it could be Carriker following through on his threats, Avallone and Knoll walked warily downstairs and peered out the building’s glass front door.
Carriker appeared suddenly from around a corner, they said, carrying a shotgun in his hands as he advanced on them with a blank face.
“The minute he saw us it was like something switched, like he had no expression on his face. Like he switched to just being evil,” Avallone said.
“He does that,” Knoll added. “He’s like Jekyll and Hyde. He’s been like that for 11 years. It’s scary.”
Avallone said he was rooted to the spot trying to understand what he was seeing, but Knoll, guessing what Carriker was there to do, sprang into action and threw herself between them.
“She was betting he wouldn’t kill her since he had expressly made his intent to murder me known,” Avallone said.
“I want to make sure it’s really clear how brave Holle was. She literally saved my life, she also knew that this guy was had intended to kill me. And she took a really daring bet. Betting that he wouldn’t kill her.”
The couple fled up into their building, just as Carriker unloaded a round through the glass door. Knoll was struck with the ricocheting slug just outside her right kneecap and peppered with glass shrapnel, leaving her bleeding profusely as they ran to the apartment and locked the door.
“He must have followed my trail of blood through the apartment to know exactly what apartment we were in, because he didn’t know the layout,” Knoll said.
Both barricaded themselves on the apartment’s back porch and called 911 as they tried to stem the flow of her blood with a sweatshirt, and within moments Carriker was banging on their front door and trying to shoot it open.
Avallone’s viral footage captured the moment officers arrived, screaming at Carriker to surrender before a loud volley of gunfire rang out. Knoll then began texting Carriker, begging him to turn himself over safely and explaining that he had wounded her already.
“I sent him a picture of my leg and I was like, ‘I’m bleeding. I need help. I need you to surrender. I don’t want to die.’ And that’s when he shot himself,” Holle said.
“This was at the point in which the police had him surrounded, and he also I think had realized he had injured Holle, and I don’t know if that was his intent or not. And I think that it just became too much,” Avallone added.
After the incident, Knoll’s sister found receipts on Carriker’s computer indicating he’d followed her across the country almost as soon as she’d left for West Virginia, and had been in Avallone’s neighborhood for at least a day before the alleged shooting.
It remains unclear when and where Carriker obtained the shotgun. Knoll said he never owned one in Washington “because he was suicidal,” and believes he purchased it in West Virginia — a state with notoriously loose gun control laws. Firearms dealers in the state are required to perform background checks, but private sellers are not.
Carriker had years of mental health troubles back home in Washington, Knoll said, which included threats of suicide, self-harm resulting in calls to the police and hospitalization, along with reports to the police from her friends and family about his aggressive behavior.
Knoll’s wound looked worse than it turned out to be. The slug only penetrated her leg about an inch and miraculously did not even require stitches. Despite the trauma of the incident, Knoll said she is still glad she chose to leave Carriker and advised anybody else trapped in an abusive relationship to take the leap and leave.
“Even though I went through the situation and ended up the way that it did, I don’t have to be in it anymore,” she said. “It’s actually better that I left, and they should find the courage to leave, too.”
GoFundMe campaigns have been set up for both Knoll and Carricker to help pay for medical bills and new housing.