the protector: michigan boy wonder

Home alone with his 11 year old sister Acelin, 14 year old James Persyn III hears pounding at the front door. He opens it to find a screaming disheveled young woman desperate and pleading for help. James ushers her in and locks the door, noting her obvious injuries and the packing tape still partially binding her, evidence of the horror from which she just somehow managed to break free. 

Moments later a second, more powerful determined pounding erupts. It is a mature male voice that James and Acelin know is not their father even though Dad is less than a mile away. The raging voice is demanding to be let in, "I know you're in there, if you don't open the door I'm going to kill you". So James grabs the cordless phone and the hunting knife his grandma just gave him the past Christmas, and immediately directs the young woman and his sister to temporary sanctuary in the bathroom. Standing guard at the closed bathroom door, knife in one hand he makes calls to his father and 911 with the other.

Acelin then frightfully notes the pounding has stopped, but it's only because the convicted felon Eric Ramsey, who had just earlier that evening kidnapped the young woman from her college parking lot at gunpoint, took her to his mother's rural house and violently raped her, then threatened her life before she jumped from his moving SUV and found refuge with these unlikely heroes, was pouring gasoline around the single story home and setting it on fire. 

Responding to James'call, James Pyeres II, immediately jumped in his pick-up truck and sped the 3 minute trip home from his place of work in less than a minute, spooking Ramsay who fled as the father arrived. The senior James doused the flames, and while desperatelty calling for his kids, quickly unlocked the front door, where James and Acelin rushed to meet him. Law enforcement arrived soon after.

Repeat offender 30 year old Eric Ramsey, recently out on parole after serving 5 years in prison for assault, was later shot and killed in a shootout with police after a dramatic several hour chase. 

I was grateful for the Persyns' warm hospitality and generosity in allowing me to be the only TV journalist granted an interview with the family. It was also an absolute pleasure working with James and Acelin, who so bravely and sincerely described, and then re-enacted the chilling events of what was just several days before. The reenactment came out of Acelin spontaneously standing up during out interview at one point, to show how she rushed to meet her father near the door that was near where we were speaking.

James the father later told me that the kids enjoyed the experience and found it cathartic.   

This was a one day "one man band" shoot, where I spent the morning reporting with law enforcement, Sheriff Leo Mioduszweski of Isabelle County, MI also appears in the piece, and the afternoon into the evening with the family. I shot all the video that appears in the segment.  

January 2013