Sounds of shattering glass followed by screams for help were heard in a Louisville neighborhood in Kentucky, leading to a woman’s rescue earlier this month.
Around 7 p.m., on Aug. 16, police responded to a house on the 1700 block of Bolling Avenue after neighbors reported hearing a woman’s cries for help.
Newly released body camera footage taken at the scene shows two Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) officers, Anthony Roach and Richard Isaacs, arriving and trying to gain access to the house.
The officers attempt to force open the front door but find it—and the entire first floor, including the windows—barricaded shut.
Managing to obtain a ladder, they eventually climb to the second floor.
An officer is seen trying to break the chain with a hatchet.
After the chain is severed but still wrapped around her, the distraught female is removed from the house. Louisville Metro EMS and Fire Department arrive and remove the chain using cutters.
The female victim suffered “indentations in the skin from the chain” and “scratches from busting out the window,” an affidavit provided by the LMPD states.
Two days later, a male suspect was taken into custody.
The incident allegedly resulted from a domestic dispute on Aug. 14 when a verbal altercation turned violent.
The suspect allegedly held the woman to the floor and used a machete to cut off a large amount of her hair, the affidavit states. He then slapped her around some more before she managed to flee the house.
When she returned to retrieve belongings on Aug. 16, the affidavit alleges, the suspect locked her inside, forced her to remove some of her clothing, and told her “you’re gonna get it tonight” and “I told you the next time you leave and don’t come home I’d kill you.”
The suspect caused pain by slapping her then took her upstairs and wrapped a dog chain around her neck. This was secured with a Master lock and bolted to the floor.
The woman was prevented from calling for help, as the suspect took her phone before he left. Yet she managed to smash open a window and scream for help.
“By leaving the victim chained up in the house with no way of calling for help or leaving, the [defendant] manifested an extreme indifference to the value of human life by engaging in conduct that created a risk of serious physical injury or death to the victim,” LMPD Detective B. O’Neil stated in an affidavit.
The suspect now faces charges of kidnapping, intimidating a participant in the legal process, wanton endangerment, domestic assault, terroristic threatening, and physical harassment.
Both the victim and suspect have a child together in common.
