Text message ends hostage situation
By Elizabeth Billips lizbillips@yahoo.com

A text message may have saved a young mother's life.

Waynesboro police arrested the woman's estranged husband Friday morning after she sent a text to her father indicating her life was in danger.

According to Major Mary Bennett, the young woman was held hostage for nearly eight hours. It began on Thursday night when her estranged husband, 23-year-old Christion Bell, found her with another man and threatened them with a gun.

The man left, but Bell allegedly held his wife inside, along with their infant daughter. According to the report, he put a gun to her head and said he would kill her and himself.

Early Friday morning, she managed to get a text message to her father. "Christion is here. He has a gun," it said. "I'm going to die tonight."

Officers found the shaken young mother inside the home, along with her estranged husband.

After he left, she told officers of the alleged assault. She also told them she had been raped.

Bell was picked up a short time later, and his gun was recovered from a yard on College Street.

He is charged with rape, aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime and cruelty to children in the third degree (Family Violence Act).

"Without that text, we would have never known," Major Bennett said. "That was the only way."