Details are still emerging about the escape of three young women, including Amanda Berry, kidnapped a decade ago and trapped in a house in Cleveland. Amy Davidson is following the story:
According to a police conference on Tuesday morning, her chance came when she forced a hole in a screen covering the lower part of the door which was big enough for her to push her arm through. Then she started to make noise. (One recalls the way that Natascha Kampusch, an Austrian girl held for eight years, kept looking for a moment to run, and finally found one.) [Neighbor Charles Ramsey, seen in the above interview] came when Berry screamed; and yet she took a risk by trying to get the attention of a stranger. What if he had just told his neighbor, with whom, he told reporters, he’d hung out at local barbecues—“ribs and what not”—that someone in his house was being loud? …
Ramsey’s 911 call is transfixing.
“Yeah hey bro,” it begins, “you check this out.” His intensity, the McDonald’s shout-out, his undoubtedly loose paraphrase of Berry’s account (“This motherfucker done kidnapped me and my daughter”), and also his competence (he does a better job with the essentials like the address than the 911 operator) make him one of those instantly compelling figures who, in the middle of an American tragedy, just start talking—and then we can’t stop listening. (See Ruslan Tsarni, Ashley Smith.) But one phrase in particular, from the interview, is worth dwelling on: “I figured it was a domestic-violence dispute.” In many times and places, a line like that has been offered as an excuse for walking away, not for helping a woman break down your neighbor’s door. How many women have died as a result? They didn’t yesterday.
The Dish 