Community shudders at US women’s long captivity
This is just the tip of the iceberg. This investigation will take a very long time. Jennifer Ciaccia, Cleveland police spokeswoman
CLEVELAND, Ohio: Ten years after watching Amanda Berry walk out of work for the last time, Darrell Ford stood transfixed behind a US police barricade picturing the horrors she must have endured.
“For ten years — what was he doing to her?” Ford asked Tuesday as FBI forensic experts scoured the house in Cleveland, Ohio where Berry and two other women were held captive for around a decade until Berry’s dramatic escape. “It’s just crazy,” he told AFP. Like Berry, Ford was just a teenager when they worked together at a Burger King restaurant in the working class neighbourhood. He was working the night she disappeared: April 21, 2003, the day before her 17th birthday.
“She was supposed to get a ride home,” the slight young man said as his three year- old son played with their dog at his side.
“We thought she was dead the whole time.”
While he is grateful Berry is alive, Ford said he’s worried she will have a hard time recovering from her ordeal.
Police have released few details about how Berry and fellow captives Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight — who went missing at different times — were treated during what must have been long and terrible years. — AFP