Held captive for 2 months in closet by boyfriend with no food, US woman escapes: Report

A woman who said she was kidnapped and held captive in a closet by her boyfriend for two months in Tennessee has managed to escape, police said. The woman was allowed out of the closet for an hour a day.

Her boyfriend 30-year-old Brenton Bell was arrested four days after the woman was found locked in a closet (Photo: Representational/Pixabay)

By India Today World Desk: A 40-year-old woman, who was held captive by her boyfriend in a closet for a period of two months, managed to escape, Tennessee police said. Police said the victim was given very little food and had no access to a bathroom facility while being held captive.

Her boyfriend, 30-year-old Brenton Bell, was arrested four days after the woman was found, who now faces an aggravated kidnapping charge, police said. He has been described as about 5-foot-5-inches tall and weighing 150 pounds.

The woman told a man working in Dyersburg, Tennessee, that she had been kidnapped and held for weeks and had just managed to escape, the local police department said in a Facebook post. After receiving the information, the Tennessee police started looking for the woman and found her hiding under a new home construction site.

She had cuts on her face and appeared to weigh less than 100 pounds.

“The victim reported that, for approximately two months, she was forced to stay in a closet that was locked by some type of locking device with a cable and was only allowed out of the closet for an hour a day,” wrote the police department.

The woman said she was locked up by Brenton Bell, 30. She said they were in a relationship but that ‘it turned physically abusive and led to her being held captive’, the police department stated.

The victim was taken to West Tennessee Healthcare Dyersburg where she was treated and released. She was also provided with additional services for victims of domestic violence, police said.

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