Martin Jonassen is accused of kidnapping his daughter, who ran naked to escape him.
Portage, Ind. - A 21-year-old woman ran naked along U.S. 20 in Portage, Ind., to get away from her father, Martin Jonassen, who reportedly kidnapped her from her Missouri home then kept her tied up in a northwest Indiana motel room.
The young woman’s plea to police: “Can I just go home now?”
She bolted from a room at the Dollar Inn at 6142 U.S. 20 in Portage, then ran down U.S. 20 to the Liquor Center, motel employees and witnesses on the highway told police, according to the probable cause affidavit. One witness described the woman as “running for her life” while a red or maroon Dodge Stratus chased her.
Surveillance video shows him picking the woman off the ground and pulling her backwards toward the door as she tried to hold onto a cooler door and later the frame of the front door. He knocked over a beer display and at one point fell into a circular beer cooler but, despite the presence of witnesses, still managed to force her into his vehicle.
Before he could leave, however, Portage police officer Lisa Duncan arrived and blocked the Dodge in with her vehicle.
Duncan found the woman huddled face-up on the floor, still naked and with a frayed rope tied around her ankles — more rope later was found around the arms of a chair in the motel room, police said.
Crying, the woman told officers Jonassen took her against her will a few days ago from her home in Gallatin, Mo., and drove them here.
When he went into the bathroom at about 9:45 a.m. Monday, she said, “I got loose and saw my chance to escape. I got out of the room and started running ... that’s when he started chasing me,” according to the affidavit.
The woman had numerous bruises in various stages of healing, according to the documents filed in Porter Superior Court. It appeared she had been beaten over a period of time and although she never said the word, she eventually nodded when asked directly if her father had raped her.
“I just want him to stop doing to me the things he has been doing for years,” she told police.
Jonassen did not deny taking his daughter out of state against her will, only telling police he was trying to keep her away from a 60-year-old man with whom she is involved.
Jonassen’s initial hearing on two counts of Class C felony confinement and one count of misdemeanor battery will be Wednesday morning in front of Judge Mary Harper. He is being held without bond, Porter County Prosecutor Brian Gensel said.
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