A woman who was locked in a Los Angeles shed and beaten with a cane for nearly a year has been freed as her brother and his girlfriend face charges for torture, authorities said.
Neighbors said they've heard shouts and sounds of struggle coming from the shed but were baffled by the noises..."I could actually hear a woman, an older woman yelling for help, what sounded like somebody being hit or being forced to be submerged in some type of water," said one resident, who wished to remain anonymous.
"But I couldn't really say for 100 percent. I never physically witnessed it, but I could hear it."
Elias Abdurahman, 61, and his 50-year-old partner Sara Kebede Tadesse were arrested after police heard screams coming from the storage shed in their Lancaster backyard last week and found their alleged captive beaten and bruised inside.
The 54-year-old victim was weak, underfed and covered in "fresh and old" bruises, Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Carolyn Yeh said Monday.
Prosecutors said she was tortured and repeatedly hit with a cane, resulting in "great bodily injury," while being kept in the shed against her will. Abdurahman and his girlfriend were set to be arraigned Oct. 20. on multiple charges, including false imprisonment by violence, torture and assault with a deadly weapon. The couple tormented the woman for "revenge, extortion and for sadistic purposes," prosecutors allege in a criminal complaint.
They were being held in lieu of $1.1 million bail.
