CINCINNATI — A man accused of abducting a woman and leading a police chase was hit and killed on I-75 Wednesday morning, Cincinnati police said.
While Chief Teresa Theetge said officials received calls from a woman's loved ones around 1:30 a.m. about her possible abduction, the woman told WCPO she was not taken.
"I do not feel like I was being abducted," she said.
The woman wanted to stay anonymous. She said the man who was driving was her friend, Tommy. Police have not yet released his name, only identifying him as a 34-year-old man.
"If you needed a friend and you called him, he was there," she said. "Everyone who knew him definitely loved him. He was a good heart, good soul, made people happy."
The woman said she was in the car with Tommy for hours.
"The plan was to take him to the hospital," she said. "It was around 8 or 9 p.m."
She said Tommy's mental health was getting worse over the last few weeks, noting he was paranoid the entire time and chose to drive because he was afraid to let someone else drive.
"Tommy ended up talking to my dad and telling him what was going on — how these fake cops were following him, how there was a situation at the casino and now the mob is after him and everybody is connected," she said.
She said driving on the highway increased his paranoia. She said Tommy felt like the cars around them were boxing him.
He drove from Ohio to Kentucky and then back to Ohio. Around 11 p.m., she told Tommy to take her home because she was scared.
They eventually stopped outside Cincinnati Police District 1.
“Even though he was paranoid about his life about to be gone, he did care about me enough to try and let me calm down," she said. “The whole time Tommy was apologizing and telling me he wasn’t meaning to do this to me and he’s sorry ... he’s not trying to make me have a panic attack, but he was scared for his life and he’s just trying to survive."
Then a cop car pulled up behind them and started to flash their lights. She said that scared Tommy.
“Zero to 70 real quick downtown, racing through, we went up a one-way the wrong way with cars coming down," she said. "I was begging him to drive the car as fast as he could to my house. All I wanted to do was make it home to my daughter."
Theetge said CPD received calls about the possible abduction describing Tommy's vehicle. Officers said they spotted the vehicle multiple times but each time they attempted to stop it, the driver refused and eluded officers.
Eventually, the vehicle came to a stop at the intersection of Freeman and Gest Street in Queensgate.
That's when Tommy's friend took action.
"I took my boots off and I told him, 'Hey you’re going to be mad at me for this,' and I stepped on the break and put it in park. He stepped on the brake, put it back in drive. Then, I did it one more time back in park," she said.
From there, police said the man got out of the car and ran away; officers chased him and called for a K-9, but while officers were waiting for the K-9 to arrive, CPD said the man ran into the northbound lanes of I-75 and was hit at least once around 2 a.m.
"I was asking all night from 2 to 5 in the morning if they had any news on him and right before they sent me home, they opened the door and was like, 'Hey just so you know your friend didn’t make it ... can you grab your stuff, it’s time to go,'" she said.
The woman said she is devastated her friend is gone and wants everyone to know he did not abduct her.
"The death is hard enough but putting a label on him that’s not true is even harder," she said.
The driver who hit him did not stop, CPD said.
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