Telemarketer calls Oregon home, hears woman screaming 'please don't kill me'
LEBANON, Oregon -- A telemarketer may have saved an Oregon woman’s life from more than 900 miles away this week.
An employee at Americare Health and Nutrition in Las Vegas Nevada made a routine call to a home in Lebanon Oregon Wednesday afternoon reported the Oregonian Newspaper.
The phone was picked up, but no one answered reported Local 8 news in Las Vegas.
Instead the telemarketer heard an increasing disturbing series of events unfolding and immediately asked her boss, Tina Garcia, to listen in on the call.
“She said, 'Tina, you need to hear this. I don't think this is a joke. Something's happening. I think this lady is getting hit,'” Garcia said. “The young lady on the other end of the phone never said hello. There was just a horrible whimper.”
Garcia's boss Mario Gonzalez also stepped in to help.
“It just got progressively worse,” he said.
According to the Oregonian Gonzales heard the woman screaming ‘please don’t kill me’ and what sounded like the woman being beaten.
Gonzales called authorities in Oregon and Linn County.
Sheriff's deputies responded to the call, and when they entered the residence they found Walter Warren John Ruck holding a woman from behind, the Sheriff's Office said. The woman told deputies that she had been held down, assaulted and had her head and face smothered with blankets and pillows.
The woman also said that at one point Ruck got out his rifle and asked the woman to shoot him.
Ruck was arrested and charged with fourth-degree assault, menacing and strangulation.
Local 8 News reported that the woman's phone was in her back pocket during the attack.
She said she had no idea someone called the police. Deputies credited the workers at Americare Health and Nutrition for intervening and possibly saving the woman's life.