Nevada Telemarketer Helps Save Alleged Assault Victim in Oregon - East Idaho News
National

Nevada Telemarketer Helps Save Alleged Assault Victim in Oregon

  Published at

thinkstock 2.1.15 telemarkers?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1422799358093Purestock/Thinkstock(LAS VEGAS) — Quick action by a telemarketer in Las Vegas may have helped save an alleged assault victim several states away.

When Camille McElroy, a telemarketer for a health care company called Americare Now, answered her phone Thursday, she heard faint crying in the background that got progressively louder, Americare Now president Mario Gonzalez told ABC News on Saturday.

“She could hear a woman being attacked brutally. At that point she advised her manager, and I happened to be walking through the floor,” Gonzalez said. “Her manager flagged me down and said, ‘You might want to hear this. This woman is being attacked.'”

McElroy told ABC News affiliate KTNV-TV in Las Vegas that she could hear the caller — a woman in Oregon — “saying, ‘Please, please, stop, no, no,’ but you can actually hear the hitting.”

“He was hitting her and it was so loud that you could tell he was hitting her hard,” McElroy said to KTNV-TV.

Gonzalez “jumped on the phone,” he said, and contacted the local Oregon authorities in Linn County, who sent deputies to the caller’s home.

The caller survived, KTNV-TV reports, and Walter Ruck, 33, was arrested on charges including assault and strangulation.

Gonzalez said he and his employees teared up and hugged each other after learning the caller was found alive.

“Very emotional for all of us,” Gonzalez said. “Very relieved at the same time. Just emotionally drained from the whole ordeal. If you would have heard the call when it was actually happening, it was very traumatic. I honestly didn’t know if the lady would be alive by the time the cops got there.”

While Gonzalez said he hasn’t been in touch with the Oregon woman, he’s been told that she has written “and wants to speak to me. So I’m looking forward to getting the chance to say hi.”

ABC News’ calls to the Linn County Sheriff’s Office were not immediately returned.



Copyright © 2015, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.

SUBMIT A CORRECTION