Shackled ‘Doorbell Woman’ Found Safe — Assaulted, Escaped After Boyfriend Committed Suicide

A woman who woke up a Texas lakeside community by ringing doorbells at 3 a.m. has been found safe. A Ring doorbell camera captured an image of the woman with shackled wrists as she approached the home of one of the neighbors.

Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office officials told Breitbart Texas they could not release the woman’s identity because she is a victim of domestic violence and sexual assault.

In a post on the sheriff’s office Facebook page, Lt. Scott Spencer said that a woman asked deputies to conduct a welfare check on her ex-husband claiming she was afraid he may have hurt himself. She said the believed the woman seen in the now-viral doorbell video may have been her ex-husband’s girlfriend.

After she showed deputies some of the text messages she received, the deputies made entry into the home located in the subdivision where the mysterious woman had been seen in the middle of the night Friday morning. The deputies found a man inside the home who died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Investigators confirmed that the woman in the doorbell cam video was the man’s girlfriend. They eventually tracked the woman down via family members in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Texas Rangers made contact with the woman and confirmed she was the woman in the video. She provided the Rangers with information that only the victim would know. She also discussed evidence found at the boyfriend’s home. She described the restraints seen in the video as the type used in “private intimate encounters,” police said.
The Daily Mail identified the deceased man as Dennis Ray Collins, age 46. The news outlet reported the man has a previous arrest for attempted sexual assault.

The victim, identified only as being 32-years-old, apparently drove to Dallas in a car after ringing doorbells in the neighborhood from which she fled.

Lt. Spencer told reporters that had Collins survived he would be facing serious criminal charges in connection with the alleged assault on the woman.

Collins allegedly admitted what he did to the woman in a suicide note found at the scene. Lt. Spencer said the woman in the video managed to escape from captivity by breaking the shackles.

‘What exactly occurred up to then I don’t know, but her allegations of sexual assault are being taken seriously and are being investigated right now. She was in distress,’ Spencer added.