Like I said in the first part of today's post; today started off normal enough. Then, excuse the language, the shit hit the proverbial fan as far as breaking news stories go. Hang tight, folks, this one's going to take a bit to explain. Stick with me here.
Around 9:30 pm Wednesday night, January 16, a female Central Michigan University student was leaving the student gym and walking out to her car. Eric Ramsey, a thirty-something year-old man, held the girl at gunpoint and kidnapped her in her own vehicle. He then took her to his house, bound her, and raped her. He then loaded her back in her car, placed some cans of gasoline in the car, and took off with her again. As he was driving, he told her he was going to kill her. She fought. She managed to jump out of the car as it was moving, and ran away towards the closest house she could see.
The Mount Pleasant area, where this took place, is pretty rural. Other than an indian reservation and the CMU campus, it's a bunch of corn fields. So the fact that this girl happened to jump out in the near vicinity of a house is extremely lucky, but not as lucky as what happens next.
The girl ran to the front door of the house, pounded on it, screaming for help and that a man was trying to kill her. During this time, Jim Persyn Jr. was on his way to pick his fiancé, Tiffany Ramon, up from work. Since Persyn only had about a fifteen minute roundtrip to pick Tiffany up, their children were left home alone. Their children being their 14 year-old son James, their 11 year-old daughter Acelin, and their 2 year-old son Angus. It was the Persyn residence that the CMU girl ran up to.
James heard her screaming, opened the door and let her in. When she told him a man was after her and trying to kill her, James locked the front door. He then grabbed his hunting knife, got the girl, his siblings, and the family dog and had all of them go into the bathroom at the back of the house and they barricaded themselves in. Since the bathroom door didn't have a lock, James made sure to sit closest to it with his knife. As this is happening, Eric Ramsey has realized where the girl has gone and is banging on the front of the house yelling to let him in. James had the girl use his phone to call 911, and then James called his dad to tell him that someone was trying to get into the house.
When Ramsey couldn't knock the front door down, he tried to light the house on fire with the gasoline he had put in the trunk of the girl's car. Luckily Ramsey was unsuccessful, and left the area. The children's parents rushed home and were able to put out any flames Ramsey had managed to start, and the police arrived. After crashing into a state trooper, stealing a sanitation truck, and then crashing into two other state troopers over the span of three other counties, Eric Ramsey was shot and killed.
James Persyn III, a fourteen year-old boy, had the presence of mind and a level enough head to save not only the rape victim, but protect his younger siblings as well. I have never been in awe of anyone before, but I was today when I had the honor of meeting the Persyn family and taking their pictures as they were interviewed by an MLive reporter. I was also heartbroken, as it was easy enough to see how scared both James and Acelin were, but they were calm in spite of the shocking events they had been witness to.
Today, I met a fourteen year-old hero.
No comments:
Post a Comment