Cops: Woman escapes NOLA "house of horrors" after abduction
NEW ORLEANS -- Police say a woman was able to escape a New Orleans "house of horrors" with disturbing, prison-like features -- including a trap-door, false walls, two-way mirrors, hidden video cameras and a chair with shackles -- after an abduction by a former co-worker whose romantic advances she had spurned, according to an arrest report obtained by 48 Hours' Crimesider.
CBS affiliate WWLTV reports a Good Samaritan came to the victim's aid when he saw her running and screaming for help near a busy New Orleans intersection Friday morning as a man chased and attempted to restrain her.
"I didn't know for sure until he grabbed her and turned around and I saw the look on her face," the Good Samaritan, Gary Messina, told the station. Messina was reportedly able to scare off the man by screaming that police were on the way.
New Orleans police said in a statement the woman had just escaped the New Orleans home where she was briefly held captive, and was tied to a chair, gagged and had a bag placed over head. Police later discovered the apartment had been modified with a hidden trap door, a chair with shackles, hidden video cameras, two-way mirrors and fake walls, according to the arrest report.
The 36-year-old woman was abducted Friday from her home in Kenner, northwest of New Orleans, police say. According to the arrest report, she was abducted by two men as she left her home on her way to work around 10 a.m. The men approached her from behind, covering her head and gagging her, police say.
A "younger" man told her they would kill her if she didn't cooperate, bound her hands and forced her inside a vehicle, she told police. Once inside, police say the suspects bound the woman's feet and took her purse with her cellphone inside. The woman told police she heard what sounded like a magazine being loaded into a pistol, and the younger man told her the weapon was "not a toy."
The two then drove her to the mid-city home, where she was restrained, according to the arrest report.
The woman said she heard the older man talking about taking the younger man home. The older man told her if she cooperated he would loosen her restraints when he returned, according to the arrest report, and she then heard music turned on and a door shut.
After the suspects left, she managed to free herself, jump a fence, and run down the street yelling for help. Police say she ran to the parking lot of a nearby bank, where according to the arrest report, the older suspect grabbed her from behind and said he wasn't going to hurt her, but she needed to go back. The suspect tried to force her into a black SUV. That's when Messina and police came to her aid and the suspect fled in the car, reports WWLTV.
Messina told the station the suspect "had her around the neck in a headlock and just wasn't going to let her go."
Police have identified one of her alleged captors as 56-year-old Mario Perez-Roque. He was arrested early Saturday in Jefferson Parish. The Times-Picayune reports that Perez-Roque worked with the victim at New Orleans' Superdome and that the woman had rejected his advances, uninterested in a romantic relationship.
Perez-Roque knew where the woman lived because he had once given her a ride to work, a Kenner police spokesman told the paper. The arrest report says that Perez-Roque had about a month ago used a ruse to get the woman into his home while they were on the way to work and made several advances toward her. Investigators determined his home was the same location where the woman was held captive, the document states.
Investigators found the victim's purse in the bathroom of the home, and later found her cell phone on Perez-Roque when they arrested him, according to the arrest report.
Perez-Roque is expected to be booked on false imprisonment and attempted simple kidnapping when he is returned to Orleans Parish, according to New Orleans police. Police are still searching for the other alleged captor.