VANCOUVER, Wash. (KOIN) — “I thought he was going to kill me.”
That’s what a Washington family was told after they woke up to a distressed woman yelling and trying to get inside their house early Saturday morning.
Concerned and confused, Jamie Woods and his wife, Caitlin Martin, of Camas, said the woman appeared to be intoxicated.
“The woman came to the back door,” Martin told KOIN.
“She had told me that someone was trying to kill her and took her car, so I said OK and I walked off into the street with her to see if I could see anything,” Woods said. “Right then and there, the car that she explained to me had turned the corner.”
At that point, he “still didn’t really understand or know that was her car and that was the man that had kidnapped her.”
Woods called 911.
“But the whole time she was out front, I stayed behind the gate because 911 told me to stay inside the house,” he said. “But for the safety of my family and the safety of the woman and myself — I wasn’t going to go back inside and just ignore her — just in case the story was true.”
Deputies investigated and confirmed that the woman was in her car early Saturday morning when a man asked her for water. The Clark County Sheriff’s Office said the woman — who has not been publicly identified — let the man in her car.
He then threatened her with a knife, officials said, then drove her car to another location, where she jumped out and got help from residents in the area.
Deputies spotted the suspect in the woman’s car, and after a 10-minute car chase, deputies arrested him with the help of the Vancouver police.
The Clark County Sheriff’s Office said the man was taken into custody but has refused to identify himself. He is being held under a John Doe booking on charges of kidnapping, robbery, reckless driving and attempt to elude.