Get away from the chain.
Police nevertheless began checking her condition.
How long had it been around her neck?
Her answer suggested hours.
Roughly three.
Possibly more.
She had been inside long enough to become dizzy while trying to free herself.
At one point, she had tried working the restraint off her wrist or body.
She could not.
She became lightheaded.
Then she reached the window.
She broke the glass.
And yelled.
That was the turning point.
If she had remained quiet inside the boarded home, police might never have come.
The structure had been designed to isolate.
She defeated that isolation with noise.
A broken window.
A scream.
A child hearing it from outside.
That sequence is why she was sitting on the porch alive talking to police instead of remaining chained inside.
Three or Four Years Together
Johna knew the man she accused.
This was not a stranger abduction.
She told police they had been together for roughly three or four years.
They had a one-year-old daughter together.
The child was not inside the home during the rescue.
According to Johna, an aunt had custody.
The relationship had apparently become violent and controlling.
Johna told officers he did not want her to leave.
She recalled him telling her:
"You are not going nowhere."
And giving her a choice that was not really a choice.
She could cooperate.
Or they could do it "the hard way."
In isolation, phrases like that can sound like relationship arguments.
Inside a house where police have just cut a chain from a woman's neck, they sound very different.
Johna described threats.
Physical assaults.
Control over her movement.
And a recent incident involving a machete.
According to Johna, days before the chaining, he attacked her and cut her hair with the blade.
That was why she had left.
The relationship had crossed into a level of violence severe enough that she physically got away.
For a brief period, she was staying elsewhere.
Yet she came back.
Not, according to her statement, because she believed everything was suddenly safe.
Because he approached her with an ordinary request.
He needed help cleaning.
He would pay her.
He promised he would not hurt her.
Johna agreed.
And the moment she entered the house, she said, the promise disappeared.
"I Promise I'm Not Going to Hurt You"
Johna later described seeing him riding a bicycle.
He stopped.
He asked her to return to the house.
Help clean some rooms.
He would pay her.
She told him she did not want to fight.
According to Johna, he reassured her.
"I promise I'm not going to hurt you."
She went with him.
That sentence is one of the most important in the entire case.
Because coercive relationships often contain exactly this cycle.
Violence.
Separation.
Apology or reassurance.
Return.
Then renewed violence.
Johna entered.
She said he immediately struck her in the face.
Then he locked the door.
The house itself did the rest.
A victim inside a normal house might run to another door.
Here, doors were secured.
Windows were boarded.
Exits required keys.
Once he locked the entrance, she realized she was trapped.
The promise that he would not hurt her had lasted only long enough to get her inside.
Then came the chain.
The House Was Built to Keep Someone In
After the rescue, police looked around with a different perspective.
At first, officers had thought they were dealing with one barricaded entrance.
Now they were seeing a pattern throughout the building.
Doors nailed shut.
Boards secured across openings.
Windows prevented from opening normally.
A basement inaccessible.
Other rooms sealed.
The front door required a key from inside and outside.
That is not a normal residential security arrangement when combined with everything else discovered.
Normal home security is designed primarily to keep strangers out.
This setup also made it difficult for someone already inside to leave.
The distinction became important to investigators and later prosecutors.
Because kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment can involve intent.
Was this an impulsive decision made in the middle of an argument?
Or had the environment been prepared to restrict someone?
The house itself became part of the answer.
The chain was not wrapped around a table leg.
It had been fixed to the floor with heavy-duty hardware.
Someone had prepared an anchor point.
Someone had created a physical limit to how far a person attached to that chain could move.
The doors and windows reinforced the same idea.
Containment.
The Machete
Police also learned that Johna was afraid of a machete.
She warned officers that the man carried one.
A new machete, she said.
She claimed he had used one against her only days earlier.
According to Johna, the blade had been used to cut off her hair.
She showed officers how much had been removed.
Hair that had once been much longer had been cut.
Whether every strand was recovered or documented is not established in the source.
But her statement gave police another reason to treat the suspect as dangerous.
This was not merely a man accused of unlawful restraint.
Johna described repeated physical violence and threats involving a large blade.
Officers asked whether he had guns.
She was not certain.
The uncertainty meant police could not assume he was unarmed.
They would have to locate him carefully.
The Cats
As officers searched the property, another unsettling detail surfaced.
There was an odor.
Someone commented that part of the property smelled as though something might be dead.
Johna discussed animals associated with the home.
She indicated that multiple cats were missing.
She did not know exactly what had happened to them.
She suspected he may have killed some of them.
The source does not establish the fate of every animal, so it would be irresponsible to state as fact that Moises killed three missing cats.
But Johna's concern added to the disturbing atmosphere inside the property.
Locked rooms.
Barricaded doors.
A chain anchored to the floor.
A woman rescued from confinement.
An alleged machete assault.
Missing animals.
Police had every reason to preserve the location as a crime scene and return with proper legal authority for a more complete search.
They did not want people wandering through the property.
They did not want evidence moved.
The house was no longer simply somebody's residence.
It was potentially the physical architecture of a kidnapping.
The Child Across the Street
The rescue depended on one of the smallest people involved.
A little girl nearby heard Johna shouting.
She looked.
She saw the woman.
Then she told her grandmother.
"That lady is yelling for help."
"She has a chain around her neck."
Children can be dismissed because they are young.
In this case, a child's observation activated the entire emergency response.