A Pennsylvania woman held against her will since early May was rescued and her alleged captor arrested after she left several distress notes in public restrooms that eventually alerted authorities.
A SWAT team found the woman Sunday at a home on Spreading Oak Drive outside Pittsburgh, where they took 38-year-old Corey Brewer into custody. He has been charged with multiple crimes, including sexual assault, strangulation and unlawful restraint, according to court records.
A preliminary court hearing was set for July 22.
Police have not released the name of the victim nor or any details about her condition due to the nature of the crime.
The pair were once in a relationship that ultimately turned abusive, and the victim was forced to obtain a court protection order against the man, reports said.
The woman told police she had been held captive and was being sexually and physically assaulted since May 1, and that Brewer threatened to kill her and her family if she tried to get away, according to the criminal complaint.
Helpless and afraid, she began scrawling urgent notes and leaving them in women’s bathrooms whenever she and the man ventured out of the home.
The first note was discovered last Thursday at a Walmart in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, according to reports, citing the criminal complaint filed in the matter.
The woman urged whomever found the note to call 911. She also included the address on Spreading Oak Drive and provided a description of the man, warning that he was also armed with a knife.
“If I don’t make it, tell my family I love them,” she wrote.
Eventually someone found the letter and turned it over to police, who went to the house to investigate but left after no one answered the door. Authorities next called the woman’s phone, but a person believed to be the suspect answered and said she was on vacation in New York, reports said.
Two days later, on Saturday, another note was found in a women’s bathroom at Fallingwater museum in Mill Run, about 65 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, the complaint said.
The second note stated that she had “been held since May 1, 2021 at Spreading Oak Drive and that they were not on vacation,” according to the complaint. “It states that she heard the police knocking at the residence, that the abuse hasn’t stopped, and please don’t give up.”
The next day authorities returned to the home with a SWAT team and found the woman.
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