Video captures second Connecticut man allegedly held captive by stepmom exits burning home
Police launched the physique digital camera footage and 911 name in reference to the case of a Connecticut man who informed officers he began a fireplace in an effort to escape the small room he had been locked away in by his stepmother for greater than 20 years.
Once they responded to the blaze within the Waterbury house on Feb. 17, officers discovered the 32-year-old man severely emaciated, having been subjected to “extended abuse, hunger, extreme neglect and inhumane therapy,” police stated in a information launch final week.
The person’s stepmother, 56-year-old Kimberly Sullivan, referred to as authorities concerning the hearth that evening.
“Please hurry,” she is heard saying to a dispatcher, including “there is a hearth.”
“My son, stepson, he’s in his room, and I don’t know, he did one thing with the TV,” Sullivan tells the dispatcher.
When she is requested if she sees flames or smoke, she stated “Sure.”
“We want an ambulance, please, please we’d like an ambulance,” Sullivan stated.
The dispatcher asks why the ambulance is required and if her stepson is injured.
“Sure, his room, the TV in his room!” the girl says. “Sure, he is injured, please ship an ambulance!”
When requested what his accidents are, she says, “I do not know.”
“He is sort of handed out, he is out of it,” she says.
The physique digital camera footage begins at round 8:50 p.m., with an officer strolling as much as the house the place he finds Sullivan standing in entrance of it, holding a canine and yelling at somebody to “come down.”
When an officer asks her who else is in the home, she says “My stepson is in right here,” and that she was helping a primary responder to get him out of the home.
She is then escorted by the officer away from the house for her security. Behind her, a firefighter seems to be carrying one other one that was within the house. The person’s face is blurred within the video.
The individual, presumably the stepson, is carried into the again of an ambulance earlier than the video ends.
Sullivan was arrested Wednesday and arraigned on expenses of assault, kidnapping, illegal restraint, reckless endangerment and cruelty to individuals, based on police. She was held on a $300,000 bond, which she posted the following day.
Sullivan has denied the allegations in opposition to her by way of an legal professional.
Her stepson, who was recognized as MV-1 in an affidavit, weighed 68 kilos when officers discovered him. He’s 5-feet-9. He informed authorities he was solely let loose within the mornings for quarter-hour to 2 hours to do chores, and that he was given two sandwiches a day and the equal of two small bottles of water.
The 32-year-old informed an officer that he set the fireplace utilizing a lighter, hand sanitizer and paper.
“I needed my freedom,” he stated, based on the affidavit.
Chatting with reporters final week, Waterbury Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo stated: “In 33 years of legislation enforcement, that is the worst therapy of humanity that I’ve ever witnessed.”
Sullivan appeared in Waterbury Superior Courtroom briefly on Thursday and declined to make any statements earlier than the decide denied the prosecution’s request to position her beneath home arrest. She will probably be allowed to journey inside Connecticut, however must hold in shut, common contact with probation officers.
