After being held hostage by a naked man for 17 hours, authorities were able to locate an 80-year-old woman whose daughter had called for a wellness check because she hadn’t texted her the day’s Wordle answer.
Denyse Holt was asleep when a 32-year-old naked man broke into her suburban Chicago home and held her hostage for 17 hours.
Police in Lincolnwood, a suburb of Chicago, have identified James H Davis III as the intruder.
Davis has been charged with home invasion with a dangerous weapon, aggravated kidnapping while armed with a dangerous weapon and aggravated assault against a police officer, CBS Chicago reported.
He reportedly entered her house through a broken window, naked and covered in blood, and slipped into Holt’s bed while holding a pair of scissors.
‘I was in shock,’ Holt said. ‘I was trying to survive, that’s all. He said, “I won’t harm you or molest you”‘.
The intruder, who police believe was suffering from issues related to mental illness, ordered Holt to take a shower with him. Fully clothed in her nightgown, she entered the shower, and then the bath with him when he said the shower was not warm enough.
After the bath, the intruder dragged Davis around her house. He disconnected the phones and took two knives from her kitchen before pulling her down into the basement and barricading her in a bathroom with a chair.
Holt did exercises during the 17 hours she was stuck, locked away in the dark.
‘I didn’t think I was going to live. I was doing marching and stretching as much as I could,’ she said.
While the intruder made himself at home, Holt’s family across the country noticed something was wrong. Specifically her daughter had noticed that she had not texted her about the day’s Wordle answer.
‘I’m across the country and I noticed this,’ Meredith Holt-Caldwell said.
Holt’s daughter, who lives in Seattle, saw her mother’s texts were not being read, and that she had not received any update on the popular word game.
‘I didn’t send my older daughter a Wordle in the morning. And that was disconcerting to her,’ Holt told the news outlet.
The game, which sees players attempt to guess a five-letter word every day has gone viral in recent weeks, with tens of thousands of players sharing their scores on Twitter each day.
Her family called the police, who showed up at Holt’s home around 9.40pm on Sunday. After an hours-long standoff, a SWAT team used a stun gun to overpower the intruder.
‘I never thought in a million years this is what was happening, but it was,’ remarked Holt-Caldwell.
‘I’m very lucky,’ added Holt, who was physically unharmed.
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