Cleveland Rescuer Saw Girl 'Going Nuts Trying to Get Out'

3 brothers arrested in shocking case; 1 woman has daughter
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted May 6, 2013 11:12 PM CDT
Updated May 7, 2013 12:07 AM CDT
Cleveland Women Rescued After Neighbors Heard Cry for Help
Investigators enter the Castro house on Cleveland's west side.   (AP Photo/Mark Duncan)

The three Cleveland women found alive after vanishing a decade ago were found in a home just a few miles away from where they disappeared after one of them apparently managed to escape her captor. Neighbors of suspect Ariel Castro say they heard a woman scream "Help me! Help me!" and found a woman who identified herself as Amanda Berry, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. "I heard screaming," neighbor Charles Ramsey tells the AP. "I'm eating my McDonald's. I come outside. I see this girl going nuts trying to get out of a house." Neighbors say she crawled out—with a child—after they kicked out the bottom of the home's aluminum door, which apparently opened just enough to fit a hand through.

After police arrived, they rescued Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight from the home and arrested Castro, 52, at a nearby McDonald's. Police say a total of three brothers have been arrested in the case and the women appear to have been held captive at the home since they disappeared—Berry in 2003 at the age of 16, DeJesus in 2004 aged 14, and Knight in 2002 aged 21, the AP reports. Neighbors say they never saw the women enter or exit the Castro home and had no idea they were in the house. "We never thought that man would do anything to anybody," says a man who has lived in the neighborhood for 25 years. "He was a bus driver." (More Amanda Berry stories.)

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