Woman protected from rapist by boy, 14, with hunting knife after she leaps from car

http://usnews.nbcnews.com ^ | january 18, 2013 | Andrew Mach

[lowbridge]

It was a night of mayhem and bravery that central Michigan will not soon forget.

A young woman who was abducted at gunpoint made a daring escape Wednesday night from her rapist into a house full of kids that was later set on fire by her attacker, police said.

The suspect, identified as Eric Lee Ramsey, 30, of Mt. Pleasant, Mich., was later fatally shot by police after he got into a series of hit and runs with police vehicles in a sanitation truck he had stolen. But before he died, he apparently tweeted that he was going to be shot.

The incident began Wednesday when Ramsey allegedly kidnapped the woman from Central Michigan University's campus, and brought her to a home where he bound and sexually assaulted her, according to a statement from Isabella County Sheriff Leo Mioduszewski.

Ramsey then put the woman in the back of a car, retrieved two gas cans and began driving. He purportedly told the woman “he was going to take her life,” Mioduszewski said. After hearing that, the woman jumped out of the car and ran to a nearby home, she told police.

Eric Ramsey, a Michigan Dept. of Corrections parolee, was shot and killed by police after allegedly abducting and sexually assaulting a CMU student, setting a house on fire and stealing a sanitation truck that he rammed into police vehicles.

Alone inside that Lincoln Township home were a 14-year-old boy and his 11-year-old sister and 2-year-old brother. The teenager, James Persyn III, told Mlive.com that he let the woman in, locked the door and grabbed his hunting knife.

[Sioux-san]

I have only been living in Michigan for the past 7 years - in that time, I have noticed prisons closing right and left. WHY ??? Don’t tell me it’s the budget because that’s bulldukey. If the State has any duty to its citizens, it is to keep dangerous people locked up. Who let this happen? Couldn’t have been all Granholm’s fault, could it? If so, why isn’t the current leader of our State doing something about it?

[cripplecreek]

We currently have more than 40 operating prisons in Michigan after the closures. This listing isn’t complete.

http://www.michigan.gov/corrections/0,4551,7-119-1381_1385-—,00.html

Personally I think we have too many prisons and a poor record of paroling the wrong prisoners. After all, Granholm had deals with CA. and PA. to import inmates to Michigan.

[Sioux-san]

There is no justification for putting bad people who have proven they’re unfixable back into Society. Change whatever needs to be changed to deal with that. I don’t know how many prisons Michigan needs, but something’s gotta give. The Rule of Law is going down the rathole.

[MrB]

ONE .22 round might not have much knockdown power,
but you can put 5-10 of them into a “target” fairly quickly.

[William Tell]

driftdiver said: "I’d rather fix the car and the house then have my 14 yr old live with the fact he’d killed someone. Even a scumbag such as this."

Given the circumstances, I would have felt pretty good ridding the world of this garbage. How old were you when you realized that some men need hanging? How old will your child need to be to realize this?

[William Tell]

wardaddy said: "The boy did the right thing. No decent person leaves a woman on their porch to be murdered period. Kids inside or not."

In retrospect, yes. But I think it is not uncommon for a pair of criminals to use a ruse such as this to gain entrance to a house. It's a judgement call which I hope the boy made consciously, having been forewarned of such a possibility.