What it is follows shortly.
(CNN) -- A Florida couple declined to answer the door just before midnight when a nearly naked woman knocked and screamed she had just been raped.
Rather, the homeowners called 911 Monday night.
The couple inside the home refused to let the woman in because they said they were afraid to open their door. In the 911 call, the woman can be heard pleading in the background. The distressed couple begged police to hurry. Their home is in an isolated area, and the couple feared for their safety if they opened the door.
It took about 11 minutes for police to arrive.
A subsequent investigation led to an arrest of a suspect and prompted the spokesman of the DeLand Police Department to remark that "unfortunately fear dictates the response anymore not knowing if (you're) being set up for other criminal activity."
Police spokesman Lt. Jack Waples added that if citizens are uncomfortable opening the door to someone seeking help, "tell the person to calm down, you are calling 911 now," Waples said in a statement.
"If there are two of you, one continues to talk to the victim reassuring them help is on the way while the other person stays on the line with the authorities," Waples said.
"You control how you respond. For example, tell the person to back away from the door to a place (you're) comfortable with so you can throw out a blanket or something then go back inside. Always beware of your surroundings around the entry way such as high bushes someone else could be hiding behind.
"Every situation will be unique in its own way and the decision to help is up to the individual depending on how much they can do to assist," Waples said.
Juan L. Vera-Soledad, 29, of DeLand was arrested in the incident and charged with kidnapping and sex battery with a weapon, according to a charging affidavit filed by police.
Vera-Soledad was in custody Thursday, and it wasn't immediately clear whether he had an attorney.
The incident began late Monday night when the woman was forced at knifepoint to enter a man's car at a Citgo in DeLand, a police affidavit said.
The motorist had been circling her several times in his 1998 four-door Toyota and then stopped his car and asked her to get in, the police report said. The man then got out of his car and revealed a silver switchblade-style knife, forcing her into the passenger seat, police said.
He then drove to a location and raped the woman repeatedly, the police document said.
When the man "then laid down in the backseat as if to take a break for a couple of minutes," the woman sat up, elbowed him in the chest, grabbed her pink shorts and fled to the residence, the document said.
The homeowner told police that "he heard someone outside banging on his front door yelling that she had been raped," the affidavit said.
Responding officers then searched for the suspect and found him with a "known prostitute" in his car, the report said.
What followed this online news story was the comments section, open to the public for opinion, observation and impression. It is presented here unedited, as it appeared at this writing.
Maybe
because I have big dogs I feel safer but I would absolutely open my door.
I have a cat from hell, so I too feel safe.
What follows is the world's stupidest thread.
Now, hear me out, because so many people on here are all "I would have answered the door with my gun and I would have been safe" about this whole thing...but what if someone developed a gun that fired pissed-off hell cats at people?! Nobody would ever attack you then. World peace would probably be at hand, even.
Great name. There is an old far side cartoon with a dobimatic. A device that fire doberman s at intruders
Please ... don't start with the Far Side cartoons or I'll never make it to work this morning.
f the dobermans shot bees at people when they barked it would be even cooler. Homer Simpson has corrupted my mind...
Shut up and take my money!
f I could upvote this +1000, it would be done!!
Or invented an angry-bird-firing rifle...
100% true story: A neighbor-lady heard a ruckus in her living-room one night and walked in there to see kitty on the windowsill going wildcat on a would-be intruder who was trying to get away but was hung up halfway through the curtains. Intruder ran, neighbor-lady ran over to comfort kitty and lock windows,noticing blood on the windowsill and drops on the floor just inside.
We had a party for kitty the next day, complete with shrimp, catnip and balloons. Yay, cats from hades and points south!
After my hell cat, I would take it over a 'greet you at the door while it plants you with its wet kisses' dog.
Precisely! Anyone coming into the home is a potential new friend. There's a reason they're called man's best friend...
you dont have dogs, mine bark up holy hell if someone they don't know is coming.
Mine would bark too, but she'd quiet down once the burglar gave her a treat.
Reminds me of that TV commercial with the barking cat...
You're right, right now I do not. But no two dogs are alike. When I did my husky would act like yours while my lab would not, depends on the breed and temperament.
Buggy hits strangers with (usually a closed mouth) like he's a porpoise and they are sharks. It's very off-putting so we put him up when people come over. Its his test to see if you will be afraid. If you are afraid then he opens the mouth. I would assume that intruders would be afraid. Duffel gets this vicious tone in his voice that is so un duffel like..
Years ago in North Fort Lauderdale a drug addled guy tried to break into my townhouse through the patio door, but when my ten ferrets ran up to see if he was edible, he ran away. But I had already taken his picture and they caught him an hour later trying to break in to a neighbor's home. Ferrets can often look like giant rats to non-owners. I loved those little guys!
That cat needs a good slapping show em who the boss is of the house. Too many people let the animal decide, thats where they give up all the power and the animal loses all rrspect for you
If that's what you think, please never own an animal... showing dominance over an animal is not by striking it. You will not gain its respect, you will only gain fear.
Shut up you I d iot. I'll smack whatever animal I want. I'm at the top of the food chain.
No, your ma is at the top of your food chain so go and clean the litter box like she told you to.
Ok cesaer, i see where you are going with this. You think you are better than me just cause i would treat the cat the way it treats me. Sorry i am not soft ljke yourself. Thats whats wrong with this country, too many softies out there ruining things for us who are rugged and tough.
Cesaer? I prefer Victoria, thank you. I trained one of the hardest dogs to train, a husky, and it was done exactly the way a pack would have done it, a way a trainer would have done it. But really, go get an husky, or any dog and use your method and hit, beat or whatever method you think would work and tell me the results. You can only hit an animal so many times before it strikes back. You don’t train an animal with fear, you train an animal with respect. And you want to use this method on a cat?! And I never claimed to be better than you, I am purely giving my opinion on experience!
So tough you would strike an eight-pound cat? LMAO!!!!
Try to pick on something your own size for a change.
He tried to but his mommy grounded him
I have a 4.5 pound chihuahua/chinese crested that if you slapped him you would have to go find it afterwarrd
Smack an animal in front of me and they will never find your body.
It's a pet that can both give love and receive love, it's not a marine that needs to prove respect for his commanding officer. Closer relationships develop out of love not fear.
If a cat is not afraid of an animal twenty times its size, how are you going to teach it respect? They have brains the size of walnuts and they chase their own tails, the rotten little darlings.
Good luck training them to do anything but sleep for 20 hours per day:
"Lie down! Snooze! Good kitteh!"
Maybe you're talking about your own brain size because most cats I've met are pretty dam smart. Can't say the same for some of the posters on this thread
Well I'm not a cat person but I can't keep my dog from pouncing on me when I go home so I guess I ail in that department.
I've never had a cat like that! Poor thing. Sometimes I think animals get teased too much and react. I'm not saying your friend was abusive. It's just strange.
Cats are very territorial and unfortunately will strike at the closest person, whether it's someone they know or not, when they feel someone is intruding in their space. We used to do the same thing to the 'cat from hell' to protect visitors, because unlike dogs, they are not the easiest to train.
I've had a few cats growing up and they were never that way..maybe some are just more territorial than others.
Because looking at a cat in the eyes is a sign of aggression.So is picking them up and hugging them. They're animals like us, not toys.
It would be easy to write this comment thread off if it consisted of the back and forth ramblings of two or three of those folks who seem to have, literally, nothing to do with their lives but ramble back and forth at each other in the comments sections of online news sites.
In this case, not so much.
I didn't do an actual count, but a quick retinal scan indicates we're enjoying the opinions of a couple of dozen people here.
And, by now, I'm taking, on faith, that if you're a regular reader of my work here, you've stayed with this piece to this point and you, like me, can feel the fear that this story has inspired.
A young woman, brutalized and in need of human assistance, found herself locked out.
And three very frightening things are apparent here.
That this kind of brutalization still lurks around us pretty much everywhere, pretty much all the time.
That our culture has put us in such a defensive posture that, faced with the chance to help someone, we have to err on the side of safety and offer only a phone call to emergency services while keeping our doors locked.
But, of the three causes for alarm, I can't help but think it's the third that's most chilling.
Apparently average, everyday individuals react to the brutalization of one citizen and the social dilemma of two others having to deny more aid to a desperate woman than they likely ached to provide with an inane, banal, arguably pathetic roundtable on the subject of...
...their pets.
...their pets.
Reading the comments once again, one is left, inevitably, with a choice of only two possibilities.
This entire group of all walks of life folks is made up of morons.
Or society has taken yet another giant step towards being so traumatized by the Clockwork Orange shade in which life seems soaked that they can only live their lives by living them in denial.
And talking about their cats.
And dogs.
And ferrets.
Apparently, no longer capable of offering insight or suggestion or, sadly, even outrage about the animal that caused a young woman to go desperately knocking on a door in the dead of night, in search of a helping hand.
It really doesn't get any more frightening than that.
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