BROOKLYN — A 31-year-old man who allegedly imprisoned and tortured a woman in his Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment for weeks was arrested only after his relatives called authorities on Monday, the NYPD said.
Anthony Matthews, 31, kidnapped the 26-year-old woman on June 29 and kept her in his Bainbridge Street home, where a police source said he burned her with an iron and heated screwdriver and shattered her teeth by shoving a gun into her mouth.
"This had been going on for a while," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly at a news conference Friday. "She was kept in an involuntary status.
"She was mutilated," Kelly added. "She was assaulted."
The alleged torture finally came to an end when Matthews took the woman to his mother's Brooklyn home and relatives called 911.
Paramedics rushed her to Woodhull Medical Center a short time later, police said. She was in the intensive care unit, an NYPD spokeswoman said.
Matthews, who claimed someone else attacked the woman, was arrested on charges of kidnapping, attempted murder, assault and weapons possession, police said. He was arraigned Thursday and held on Rikers Island without bail, authorities said.
He is due back in court Tuesday.
Kelly said Matthews — who a police source said has three previous arrests for assault and trespassing — and the victim had been in an on-again, off-again relationship for two years.
Matthew's neighbor, Ruby Moses, said she heard a commotion at 5 a.m. on Monday, but that before that there was never reason for her to suspect anything.
"This happened next door to me. I never heard a sound, not a peep," Moses said. "Nice guy— but they don't go around saying 'I beat up women.'"
