Charles Ramsey is being hailed a hero and has become an internet celebrity after he helped kidnap victim Amanda Berry escape from her captor Ariel Castro on Monday.
The interview he had given to press after the astonishing rescue of three missing girls found alive have since gone viral.
Berry was one of three kidnapped Ohio women who escaped a house where they had been imprisoned for 10 years. Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight, all went missing in separate incidents between 2002 and 2004 in Cleveland. DeJesus and Knight were found alive in the house of Ariel Castro after Berry's dramatic escape.
Memes, musical remixes, and auto-tunes of Charles Ramsey's down-to-earth interview that he had given explaining how he helped Amanda Berry escape have popped up on the internet since Monday.
His three-minute interview reportedly has 'all the ingredients' for a modern-day remix. He had heard Berry's screams as she made a break for freedom from the house.
Instead of ignoring the screams, Ramsey rushed to help and free Berry who he found trapped in a residence belonging to his own neighbor.
His interview is as follows:
"I heard screaming. I'm eating my McDonald's, I come outside, I see this girl going nuts trying to get out of her house. So I go on the porch, I go on the porch and she says 'help me get out, I been in here a long time'. So you know, I figured this is a domestic violence dispute, so I opened the door, but we can't get in that way because how the door is, it's so much that a body can't fit through, only your hand. So we kicked the bottom and she comes out with a little girl, and she says 'call 911. My name is Amanda Berry'," Charles Ramsey told reporters.
"About five minutes after the police got here. See, that girl Amanda told the police 'I ain't just the only one, it's some more girls up in that house.' So they going' up there, you know, 30 or 40 deep, and when they came out it was just astonishing, cause I thought they would come up with nothing. I figured, I mean, whoever she was, like I say, my neighbor, you got some big testicles to pull this off dude, cause we see this guy every day I mean every day."
Ramsey explained that he has been left astonished that his neighbor was behind the kidnappings, and admitted he and the other neighbors on the street had no clue that something sinister was happening inside the house. Ramsey said that he ate barbecue and listened to music together with Ariel Castro.
He said, "Not a clue that that girl was in that house, or anybody was in there against their will, because how he is, is he just comes out to his backyard, he plays with the dogs, tinkers with his cars and motorcycles, goes back in the house. So he's somebody that you look and you look away because he's not doing nothing but the average stuff, you see what I'm saying? Ain't nothing exciting about him. Well, until today."
Once Berry was freed from the house, she rushed with Ramsey across the street to call 911 and alert authorities that she was alive and free.
Police were sent to the house where the other two girls were also found. DeJesus, Knight, Berry and her six-year old daughter known as Jocelyn, who she gave birth to while in captivity, were all rushed to hospital to be checked over as they showed signs of malnourishment.
Three brothers have been arrested for the kidnappings of the girls. Fifty-two-year-old Ariel Castro, as well as his brothers Pedro Castro, 54, and O'Neal Castro, 50, are all in police custody. The girls were kept imprisoned in Ariel Castro's house, where his brothers lived nearby. Authorities found chains hanging from the ceiling upon their rescue.
See below for the interview video and remixes of the interview that have been created within hours of his now infamous words:
See the original interview below:
