An elderly woman was saved from a man holding her hostage in her Lincolnwood, Illinois, home after her daughter suspected something might be wrong when she had not sent her regular Wordle update, a local CBS affiliate reported Friday.
According to the report, 80-year-old Denyse Holt had been held hostage for nearly 17 hours earlier this week after a naked man broke into her home, then dragged her around the house and disconnected her phone lines before locking her into her basement bathroom.
But her daughter alerted police to check on Holt’s home on Sunday night when she realized that Holt had not sent her score for the daily word puzzle and had not answered the phone, CBS2 Chicago reported.
“I didn’t think I was going to live,” Holt told the station. “I didn’t send my older daughter a Wordle in the morning and that was disconcerting to her,” she told the news outlet.
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When officers arrived on the scene, they discovered a broken window and found the suspect on the second floor of Holt’s home with multiple knives. They were able to safely remove Holt from her basement and she did not sustain any injuries, the station reported.
Police confirmed that the suspect, James H. Davis III, 32, was taken into custody and is facing felony charges including home invasion with a dangerous weapon, aggravated kidnapping while armed with a dangerous weapon, and aggravated assault against a peace officer.
As noted by the outlet, “Wordle is a puzzle game in which players have six chances to guess a five-letter word that has grown wildly popular in the last few months, with hundreds of thousands of players daily who often post their scores on Facebook and other social media.”
