A Butler woman recounted being chased down, punched and kicked during an altercation earlier this month with her then-boyfriend.

The worst, however, was yet to come, 35-year-old Tiffany Schramm testified at a preliminary hearing Monday for James B. Byers, 35, of Pittsburgh.

The woman described how Byers repeatedly burned her with a red-hot knife blade.

“It was a big butcher knife,” she said. “He ran it over my electric stove for 10 minutes, and he burned me with it, twice on the back and once really good on the stomach.”

He would later blame her for provoking the attack, she said.

District Judge Pete Shaffer at the hearing ordered Byers held for court on charges of aggravated assault, simple assault and terroristic threats in the suspected attack Oct. 9 at Schramm’s home in the 300 block of First Street.

The defendant remains in the Butler County Prison on $50,000 bail.

Schramm, the lone witness to testify at the hearing, told prosecutor Mark Lope, a Butler County assistant district attorney, that at the time of the violent encounter she and Byers had been dating for about four months.

The two had argued earlier that night before he went to sleep. Later, she went upstairs to”make up” with him, but he became angry.

“I ran downstairs and he ran after me,” Schramm said. “He was punching me in the face, neck and back, and kicking me in the ribs.”

She absorbed the pummeling on the kitchen floor. Byers at some point grabbed hold of a knife that was in the dish rack strainer in the sink.

She said he turned on the stove and ran the knife blade “back and forth” over the heat. He then applied it to her skin.

“Why didn’t you leave when he was heating the knife?” Byers’ attorney, Nathan Lyle, asked Schramm.

“He had me on the ground, between me and the door,” she replied. “He kept pointing (the knife) at me saying it I’d leave it would get worse.”

Schramm also denied during further defense questioning that she and Byers that night were engaged in dominant-submissive sexual role playing.

She acknowledged, however, that during their brief relationship the two had talked about getting his name “branded” on her body.

Lyle asked if the knife burning was somehow consensual.

“No,” she snapped back. “I begged him to stop and he wouldn’t.”

Schramm testified that she eventually got out of the house and ran to a neighbor’s home for help.

She ended up at Butler Memorial Hospital, where she was treated for four or five days.

Her injuries included two broken ribs, a collapsed lung and a ruptured blood vessel in the left eye.

She also suffered three prominent burns — one on her abdomen and two on her back, according to police.

The burn marks were in the shape and size of the knife used in the suspected attack, the report noted.

Schramm had trouble holding back tears as Lope showed her photographs, taken by police, that documented the burns.

Officers, following the call to Schramm’s house, recovered the knife in an upstairs bedroom. The knife, the report said, was “discolored and it appeared to have been heated up.”