VANCOUVER, Wash. (KOIN) — “I thought he was going to kill me.”
In the wee hours of Saturday morning, a family in Camas woke up to a woman in distress who was yelling and trying to get inside their house.
Jamie Woods and his wife Caitlin Martin were concerned and confused. They said the woman appeared to be intoxicated.
“The woman came to the back door,” Martin told KOIN 6 News.
“She had told me that someone was trying to kill her and took her car so I said OK and I walked off into the street with her to see if I could see anything,” Woods said. “Right then and there the car that she explained to me had turned the corner.”
At that point, he said, he “still didn’t really understand or know that was her car and that was the man that had kidnapped her.”
Woods called 911.
“But the whole time she was out front I stayed behind the gate because 911 told me to stay inside the house,” he said. “But for the safety of my family and the safety of the woman — and myself, I wasn’t going to go back inside and ignore her — just in case the story was true.”
Deputies investigated and confirmed this woman was in her car early Saturday morning near Mill Plain and Grand Boulevard when a man asked her for water. The Clark County Sheriff’s Office said the woman — who has not been publicly identified — let the man in her car.
Then he threatened her with a knife, officials said, then drove her car to Northeast 28th Street and 223rd Avenue.
That’s where she jumped out and got help from residents in the area.
Deputies spotted the suspect in her car and after a 10-minute car chase deputies arrested him with the help of the Vancouver police. He was taken into custody near NE 2nd and 115th.
Though the man is in custody, the Clark County Sheriff’s Office said he has refused to identify himself. He is being held under a John Doe booking on charges of kidnapping, robbery, reckless driving and attempt to elude.