Woman seen in video recalls night of abuse before daring escape

The sexual assault victim seen in a dramatic doorbell video from a Montgomery County home has revealed that her boyfriend gagged and raped her the night of her escape.

On the morning of Aug. 24, the 32-year-old woman — only identified as Lauren — recalled waking up to Dennis Ray Collins — her boyfriend of four months — kneeling over her, binding her with duct tape and “stuffing some sort of clothes” in her mouth, according to her interview with “Inside Edition.”

“I truly felt like when that was happening, like, I was going to die there that night,” she said, her voice trembling. “There was nothing behind his eyes. It scared me, and I didn’t feel like it was the person I knew.”

In her account to “Inside Edition,” she screamed until her throat hurt. Still wearing the restraints, she said she escaped out the front door around 3 a.m. after he allowed her to get a drink in the kitchen.

While outside, she tried to flag down a passing car in the Sunrise Ranch subdivision near Lake Conroe, but the driver refused to stop. She unsuccessfully sought help from neighbors and several seconds of her flight was captured in surveillance footage when she rang a doorbell with a camera on it. The alarming video of her, pantless and barefoot, became the subject of global news reports.

After her escape, and contrary to what the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said last month, she said she never returned to Collins’ home. She left to be with a friend and then family in Dallas, she said.

Collins, who killed himself on Aug. 29 as deputies approached his home, penned a suicide note professing his love. He denied that he would have killed her, according to “Inside Edition.”

“I’m sorry for what I’ve done, and I wish I could turn back time,” Collins reportedly wrote.