A kidnapping victim who was beaten, bound, and then forced into the trunk of his own car narrowly escaped after the suspected kidnappers crashed the vehicle into a residential home.
The Seattle Police Department received multiple calls early Thursday morning that a car had crashed into a home in the Ravenna, Seattle, neighborhood and caught fire.
“I heard a screeching noise and then just the most sickening crunch,” neighbor Cheng Yu told KING 5.
When officers arrived on the scene just after 5 a.m., witnesses reported a man claiming he had been kidnapped crawled out of the trunk of the fiery vehicle.
Before emergency personnel arrived on the scene, startled residents noticed the car had begun to catch fire and starting to spread to the corner of the home.
Homeowner Brooks Mierow told the outlet he quickly got his family out of the home, grabbing a fire extinguisher to put out the flames before firefighters arrived.
As Mierow fought the fire, Yu was on the phone with 911 dispatchers when they heard muffled screams from inside the vehicle.
“We heard a screaming of, ‘Ahh, ahh.’ I think he was trying to scream for help,” Yu told KING 5.
Witnesses were in shock as the victim, a 63-year-old unidentified male, frantically crawled out from the vehicle’s trunk.
Still bound and panicking, the victim was seen screaming that he had been “kidnapped” and needed help by the trunk of his car when neighbor Raegan McKibbon arrived to assist the man.
McKibbon — who told the outlet she saw two men fleeing from the scene after the crash — took the victim across the street and gave him socks and a coat as they waited for police and the fire department to arrive.
“He was beat up pretty bad. They had cut his face with a knife and had beat him up pretty badly,” McKibbon said.
The Seattle Fire Department was able to extinguish the fire before it spread further to Mierow’s home, while also treating the victim for non-life-threatening injuries.
The victim was then taken to Harborview Medical Center, The Seattle Police Department reported.
Yu, who was glad the victim was in care and that no one else was hurt, was in disbelief at the incident.
“You can’t make this stuff up. It’s just so absurd,” Yu told KING 5.
A spokesperson for the department, Officer Judinna Gulpan, told the outlet that the kidnapping did not appear to be targeted.
The victim reported to investigators that several individuals had assaulted him before he was tied up and stuffed into the trunk of his car.
No arrests have been made.
Detectives did detain one 18-year-old male for questioning, who matched the description of a possible suspect, but he was later released.
Police are asking anyone with information involving the kidnapping attempt to call the SPD Violent Crimes Tip Line at (206) 233-5000.
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