A neighbor walking past an abandoned Chicago house called police after hearing a woman screaming for help and banging on a boarded-up window, authorities said.
Antione Dobine went live on Facebook after calling 911, shouting to other residents that a woman was being held prisoner inside a brick house overrun by ivy and weeds. “She’s beating on the window!” he shouted.
His video has been viewed more than 400,000 times.
Police found a 36-year-old woman handcuffed and chained in an upstairs bathroom. She was freed and taken to a local hospital, where she was treated and released.
“She was screaming, ‘Help,’ and I was like, ‘Who is in there with you?’ and I was asking her different questions,” Dobine told WSLV-TV. “The police said her legs were chained and her hands were handcuffed.”
Abandoned and neglected properties are a common blight in the area, neighbors said.
“We have to do something,” resident Louis Walton-Muhammad told WMAQ-TV. “When a person comes to this neighborhood it’s the first thing they see. Grass all the way up, properties that people aren’t taking care of, and in their minds they say ‘Oh, this is a good place to stash somebody.'”
Police said the case involves kidnapping and sexual assault. Investigators are searching for a man who held her captive, they said.