The late actor, James Ransone, came to his neighbour’s rescue while she was being attacked by a ‘repeat sexual offender’, she has shared.
Ransone, best known for playing Ziggy Sobotka in HBO’s The Wire, died age 46 by suicide, the Los Angeles Medical Examiner ruled.
He is survived by his wife, Jamie McPhee, and their two children, Jack and Violet.
A woman who says she was neighbours with Ransone in New York, revealed he ‘saved’ her in a horrifying attack.
On Instagram, a user called Molly Watts, who goes by the handle @mollyxxwatts, said after finding out that he died, she felt compelled to tell her story.
Watts wrote: ‘I was attacked at the threshold of our building. I screamed for help. No one came.
‘My attacker put his hands around my throat so I would stop making noise.’
She said she couldn’t breathe and became certain she would die or be raped as she was choked.
Watts went on: ‘PJ [Ransone] heard my screams and ran to help. He came running shirtless, carrying a bat or pipe — I’m not sure which, because I never saw him in action.
‘He scared my attacker, who ran. PJ chased him to the building he fled to.
‘Because of the chase, the police were able to identify him, a repeat sexual offender.’
Ransone and Watts were neighbours in Chinatown at the time, according to her post, and were in ‘overlapping social circles’.
She said that she regrets not reaching out to thank him, admitting that she’s not sure she’d have had the same life if he hadn’t stepped in.
Her post finished with a link to the GoFundMe set up to support Ransone’s family.
Metro has reached out to Watts for further comment.
In 2016, on SiriusXM’s Jim and Sam Show, Ransone talked about the time he ‘stopped a rape’ in 2006.
Speaking 10 years after the incident, Ransone remembered watching TV with his then-girlfriend when he heard a scream coming from downstairs in his apartment building: ‘I could see my upstairs neighbour pinned down on the ground, face up, and this guy was like trying to rape her, basically.’
After running back upstairs to tell his girlfriend to lock herself in the apartment and call the police, he went chasing after the alleged attacker.
Ransone recalled their interaction, where the man ‘mimed having a gun in his sweatshirt pocket’, before the actor hit him with a metal bar.
The chase that followed led to an altercation that saw the alleged attacker slam Ransone’s arm into a door and left him with a bleeding chest from broken glass.
After the alleged assailant was picked up by police, Ransone said that he had to go ‘pick him out of a line-up and testify against him in court’.
His story stayed with fans. One user on Instagram, @sapphirenickie, commented on Watts’ post detailing her experience.
She wrote: ‘I’m so glad he could help you that day. I’ve heard him tell this story and it’s pretty surreal to hear from the person he saved… He viewed his actions as “just doing what anyone would do”, but we know so many wouldn’t (and didn’t).
‘He was a special one.’
Metro has contacted Molly Watts for further comment.
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