Police in Ohio this week rescued a battered 23-year-old woman who was being held against her will in a cold detached garage by a man who has been charged with kidnapping three times before in the last decade.
The woman was wearing torn, dirty clothes when Akron police helped her down a ladder from an overhead space, the Akron Beacon Journal reported after watching officers’ body camera footage of the rescue. She had swollen lips and blackened eyes, one of them swollen shut. Her puffy face was yellow and purple with bruising, and she said she’d been held in the garage for four days.
William Mozingo, 33, was booked into the Summit County jail on charges of felonious assault, unlawful restraint, kidnapping, abduction, parole violation, and escape.
A man who lives at the home found Mozingo and the woman in the garage at about 1 a.m., about nine hours before police forced the garage door open. The resident told police he’d gone into the garage for a dolly to take out an old washing machine and replace it with a new model.
“I was in there grabbing the dolly when I heard, ‘Bro,’” the man told police.
The voice belonged to Mozingo, someone the man and his wife said they knew but had cut off contact with months before. He told police he was outside talking with Mozingo when he heard a woman’s voice asking, “Can I come down now?” When he heard her a second time, he went into investigate and saw her in the attic-like space at the top of a ladder.
He climbed up and brought her down. She told him she was scared and didn’t know what to do, he said. The resident didn’t either. He went back inside and spoke with his wife, and they decided to wait until morning to call police.
“I didn’t know how to handle this while keeping her safe and without getting anyone else [hurt],” he told police. “He wasn’t in his right state of mind. I wanted to make it look like I wasn’t doing anything so he wouldn’t get panicky.”
The residents told police they suspected the wife’s 80-year-old father likely left the garage unlocked. But by the time police arrived, it was locked tight.
The body camera footage shows officers calling for Mozingo to come out before one of them takes a long, wooden tool to pry the door open. Once he did, officers approached with guns drawn — and Mozingo came out.
The Beacon Journal said that Mozingo was jailed for a kidnapping incident in Adams County in 2014 and in Stark County in 2017 and 2019, serving 18 months on the last one.
The woman was taken to a hospital for treatment of her injuries. Mozingo is being held on a $100,000 bond.
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[Featured image: Akron Police via Akron Beacon-Journal. Inset: William Mozingo/Summit County Jail]
