Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re reposting it here in case you missed it.
It’s difficult to imagine what could lead a person to say they feel “truly blessed” after enduring abduction and abuse for days, but thanks to a hero named Antione Dobine, one woman is saying just that.
The 36-year-old woman from Chicago, who has remained unnamed for privacy reasons, told WGN-TV that she was headed to a nearby store when she crossed paths with a man she’d met before.
The 60-year-old man got her attention and then attacked.
“I end up bumping into him and he was like, ‘You know, come here for a minute,'” she said. “I’m trying to fight him but can’t, can’t fight him.”
Chicago police are investigating after a woman says she was abducted, raped and chained inside a vacant South Side house for days. https://t.co/G1prlo32Xh
— WGN TV News (@WGNNews) May 22, 2022
The man dragged the woman to an abandoned house in West Pullman, where the woman said he raped her twice and then left her handcuffed and chained in the attic.
And she stayed there for four or five days, screaming for help but not getting any.
On Saturday at around 5:30 p.m., local community activist Antione Dobine was passing by the house when he heard a strange commotion.
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“As I got closer, I’m hearing boom, boom, boom, help!” he said. “That’s what made me call the police.”
“I just located a girl inside of this house. Police say she’s chained up,” he said during a live Facebook video, according to WGN-TV.
As Dobine waited for police to arrive, he also spotted a man around 5 feet, 8 inches tall leaving the house in a “blue jean corduroy jacket.”
Upon being freed, the woman was taken to the hospital and stayed there overnight, according to WMAQ-TV.
Despite the horrors she faced and the fact that the suspect is still on the loose, the woman knows what could have been and is thankful for Dobine’s intervention.
“He could have ignored me but he heard me and he helped me,” she said. “I’m just blessed. I’m truly blessed.”
“I believe that he will strike again,” she added of her abuser. “So I mean… I want him caught.”
The many abandoned houses in the area have been a constant issue, one that local resident Louis Walton-Muhammed suggests should be investigated more closely.
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“Let’s open the abandoned homes,” he said. “Let’s walk through the homes. Let’s do a search. Let’s lock it back up just … make sure everything is OK.”
As a result of this incident, Dobine has proposed a solution: Turning at least some of those abandoned homes into homes for abused women.
Dobine has started a fundraiser to pursue this goal and hopes to turn one of the area’s problems into an asset.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
