Mortal Danger

she thought the tenants had moved out. There weren’t any lights on inside. Not daring to delay, she raced on up the steep driveway.
    Kate ran diagonally across the yard of her friends’ bright blue bungalow and was relieved when she saw several cars parked there, although there were no lights on. She darted along the side of the house, trying to keep out of sight, and rounded a corner, heading for the front door.
    She tried the door. It opened. She closed it behind her and quietly locked it. If anyone was home, they were asleep. She didn’t know what time it was—the evening had been endless; it could be two o’clock in the morning. Now she faced another danger. She was the intruder, and Mike, the husband who lived there, probably had a gun. Hewould be within his rights to shoot her if he didn’t recognize who she was.
    And John was probably just outside, looking for a way to get in.
     
    As Kate’s eyes adjusted to the dark inside her neighbors’ house, she saw a child sleeping nearby. A television was on somewhere in the house, and she saw the screen flicker. As gently as she could, she eased a sleeping bag off the bed where the child was sleeping and wrapped it around herself, calling out for her neighbors—Mike and Maria—in a whisper.
    No one answered.
    But then she saw they were sleeping on a porch next to the room she was in. She raised her tortured whisper a little. “It’s Kate,” she called. “John’s trying to kill me. Call 911!”
    Finally Mike woke up. They all huddled in the hall, where they wouldn’t be open targets if John had grabbed one of his guns. Apparently, John didn’t know which house Kate had gone to for help.
    Mike saw him on another neighbor’s porch, banging furiously on their door. The resident who lived there had a police scanner, and it was quite possible that John had heard the dispatcher sending units to the cottage. At that point, it seems that John had either returned to his cottage or to Kate’s car. The headlights were off, so it was difficult to see if anyone was in the car.
    Three law enforcement agencies had responded to the911 call for help. It was 10:30 p.m. when central dispatch in Brookings directed Curry County Sheriff’s Sergeant John Sevey to an address on Bellevue Lane. He was joined by Oregon State Police Trooper Dan Stennit and Officer Wally Hartman of the Gold Beach Police Department. Records show that they arrived at 10:49 p.m.
    As Hartman left his patrol car and walked toward Mike’s house, the officers saw headlights sweeping the driveway. At the same time, Kate saw other headlights dim, move out of the neighbors’ driveway, and head toward the highway. It was John, driving her car. He must have known the sheriff was coming, and he’d been biding his time so he could escape without running into them.
    Kate wondered where he was going.
    Hartman and Stennit raced to their units and attempted to catch up with John, but his head start was just enough to let him disappear before they got to Highway 101. They couldn’t tell which direction he’d turned there.
    Inside Mike’s house, Sergeant Sevey looked at Kate, and she could see the concern in his eyes. She was naked, except for the sleeping bag she’d wrapped herself in. There was dried blood on her mouth, her lips were badly cut and swollen, particularly on the right side, and her entire face was puffed up and scratched.
    And, of course, she was in shock. “Jewell was extremely frightened,” Sevey wrote in his report. “To the point of near-hysteria. She was cowering in the corner of a hallway, afraid Branden was going to see her from outside and come inside and get her. She would cringe at every sound she didn’t recognize.”
    Even though she had seen John drive by and head toward the highway, she was terrified that he would come back to kill her.
    Sevey called the lieutenant and asked for assistance with the investigation. Deputy John Ward was then directed from Brookings to be present for an interview with Kate at the hospital.
    After taking a brief statement about what happened, Sergeant Sevey called for an ambulance at 11:01 p.m. and requested that Kate be transported to Curry General Hospital. Deputy Ward followed in his patrol car behind the ambulance just in case John should double back and try to cause an accident on the way.
    Once Kate was safely on her way to the hospital, Sevey and Trooper Stennit entered the cottage she’d fled from. It was midnight, and they entered