Couple Hallucinating On Bath Salts Reports Abduction, Rape

A legal way of getting high caused a Zanesville couple to hallucinate an abduction and rape, which they reported to police this past week in one of the county's first reports of bath salt intoxication.

Ohio lawmakers are attempting to join at least 10 other states in banning the substance, which is marketed as a "bath salt" but has a different chemical composition than the aromatic salts meant to be poured into the tub. Poison centers in Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland reported four cases in 2010, but that has jumped to 170 cases in 2011.

Two Zanesville residents were transported to Good Samaritan Hospital this past week after they told police officers they had been ingesting the substance for several days.

Officers were called to a home in the 900 block of Sharon Avenue early Wednesday morning in reference to a woman being abducted. However, when they arrived they found a 36-year-old man half-clothed and holding a hatchet in the front yard and the woman underneath the floor of the home trying to claw her way out.

Officer Travis Groves stated in his report that the man was agitated and scared. The man told officers someone was underneath the floor of his home with his girlfriend, possibly raping her.

Officers entered the home and saw two hands sticking out of holes in the living room floor and heard the woman screaming for help.

At first, officers thought a home invasion might have occurred since the home appeared to be ransacked.

But once they got to the basement to help the 23-year-old woman, they found out an entirely different story.

The woman had become lodged in the crawl space of the home, Groves stated, and was wearing very little clothing.

When asked why she was in the crawlspace, the woman said she chased another woman into the basement and the woman was able to elude her by climbing out a trapdoor in the closet.

When officers checked the closet, they found tool boxes on top of the door accessing the basement. Officers called emergency medical personnel to check the couple.

The man outside the house told officers they needed to search the area because he had heard people on the roof and he thought they were going to abduct his girlfriend.

Officers then discovered the couple had taken a 3-month-old baby to a neighbor's home just before police arrived. The officers had the couple and the baby taken to the hospital to be examined.

At the hospital, the man told officers the couple bought bath salts at the convenience store and had been ingesting them for two days. He put the salts in warm water and drank the concoction, while the woman put the salts under her tongue. The man said the bath salts gave him the same affect as Viagra.

He also told officers while his girlfriend was under the floor, he thought someone was trying to rape her and he took a circular saw and attempted to cut her out of the floor. Failing to do that, he then took a hatchet and tried to punch holes in the floor.

Muskingum County Children's Services now has custody of the infant, and the couple has been charged with child endangerment.

Source : http://www.zanesvilletimesrecorder.com/article/20110529/NEWS01/105290302/1002/rss01