A tender lie-in came to a dramatic end for a Washington couple when a badly beaten woman banged on the door, claiming she had escaped from a kidnapper.
Gary and Robin Marcello were still sleeping when the 27-year-old woman arrived at the door of their Gig Harbor home barefoot and bleeding at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning last month.
Newly released bodycam footage shows the moment first responders arrived at the home and helped the injured woman to a nearby ambulance before approaching the attacker's home.
“Gary took her inside and closed the door to protect us for a minute,” Robin said.
“And she kept saying, 'He's going to kill me.' He's going to kill me.”
Paramedics helped the badly beaten kidnap victim out of her rescuers' house
Gary and Robin Marcello were still asleep when the 27-year-old woman arrived at the door of their home in Gig Harbor, Washington, barefoot and bleeding
The first responders tried to find out what had happened to the young woman
“There was so much blood I couldn’t tell exactly where it came from.”
“It came out of her head and her ears.”
Her peace was shattered when her doorbell started ringing incessantly and Gary answered the door.
“When I came out there was no one there,” he told Kiro7.
“And I walked out and looked to my left and there was a young lady.
“When she turned around, her face was covered in blood.”
“And it said, 'Go in the house.'” “We got her in. My wife took over from there.”
The woman told them she ran from the house a quarter mile away when the couple called 911.
“It was obvious she was bleeding from her head and ear and I couldn't tell exactly where she was hit,” said Robin, who has first aid training.
“But when I tried to hold her and move her because she started to slump forward, it hurt to hold her arms, to hold her.”
“And then she got shocked and fell to the ground.”
Robin Marcello, who used her own first aid training to help the woman, watched from the front door as she was taken from her home to the hospital
The woman had walked a quarter-mile barefoot to the couple's Gig Harbor home after escaping her abductor's nearby home
The barely conscious woman was able to tell her rescuers where she had been held captive
Gig Harbor Police Chief Kelly Busey said the woman was kidnapped days earlier and held captive by David Paul Ruffier, 66.
“When she tried to escape the house, he tried to stop her,” he added.
“And he hit her several times with a piece of furniture, a chair leg or something.”
“She was seriously injured, had lacerations to her head and was panicking.”
The video shows paramedics carrying the injured woman out of Marcello Room and trying to figure out some details of the attack as she is taken on a stretcher to an ambulance.
“Can you tell me who did this to you?” you ask.
“You do not know? Was it a family member? Do you live around here? Where do you live?
“We want to talk to this guy. 'Can you tell me how to find him?'
The woman raised a finger to point at her attacker's house.
'Which direction? This way,” the medic confirmed.
The video then shows police arriving at Ruffier's home and then banging on the door.
“Do you see the drops of blood?” one of them remarks grimly: “They’re not ours.”
Inside, they found Ruffier dead from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, and the house was filled with smoke and the smell of chemicals.
When police arrived moments later, they found blood on the porch of David Ruffier's home
Inside, they discovered that Ruffier had tried to set the house on fire before shooting himself
“It's difficult because the victim in this case really doesn't have a lot of memories. She can't even remember where she met the man or how long she had been in this place. “It’s going to be a little difficult,” said Chief Busey.
The woman was later released from hospital after being treated for her injuries.
“It kind of shocks you that you didn't know this was going on, you didn't know this person was capable of this and we're just going about our lives here,” Gary told KING.
“We hope that anyone this happens to will do the same,” Robin added.