Goshen, Vermont - November 10, 2011
"I thought she was lost at first," Ed Hayes said.
It's a morning Hayes won't soon forget. He was on his way to work when a woman ran out of the woods screaming.
"She was coming out of Brown's Meadow waving her arms. She was pretty distraught, pretty upset," he said.
Turns out the distraught woman was Hayes' neighbor. As they drove to the town office to call for help, she told him two men broke into her remote home on Fay Road in Goshen.
"The female victim was in her house sleeping when two males broke in. They did tie her up. They did make requests which we are not releasing right now," Vt. State Police Det. Albert Abdelnour said.
The two men took off and the woman escaped.
"She was able to get untied and she ran through the woods. I mean it was probably half a mile," Hayes said.
Meanwhile, her captors had stolen her black Ford pickup and were using it as their getaway car. They evaded police for about an hour before they crashed along Route 73 in Brandon.
"It looks almost as if the car just rolled to a stop. They might have jumped out of it while it was moving," Abdelnour said.
The suspects then fled on foot and police have yet to find them. The victim says she didn't recognize her captors, but she did get a good look. She described them as two white men, 25-30, between 5'8" and 5'10" tall. One has a medium build and the other is heavyset. Both were wearing dark pants and dark sweatshirts, one said Killington on the back in neon writing. The other had a patch on his pants that said Brooklyn.
At this time police are not saying what the men were looking for or what they took from the home. And they do not know if the woman's remote home was targeted.
"They do look for houses that sit back; it gives them more time to burglarize the house. So whether this was the intentional house or accidental we don't know," Abdelnour said.
Anyone with information is asked to call Vermont State Police in New Haven at 802-388-4919.
