Kidnapped Woman’s Plea for Help Answered

A woman who says her trucker boyfriend beat her and held her captive for six months thanked a janitor and Tennessee police Wednesday for answering a plea for help she scrawled on a restroom wall.

“I’d probably be dead now if it wasn’t for them,” Katina Shaddix said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Binford Aycock was cleaning the bathroom at an Interstate 75 rest stop Friday in McMinn County, Tenn., when he found a message scrawled in black marker: “Won’t let me out. Beating me, this is no joke!” The message also referred to “Cannon truck 383.”

Aycock called 911, and officials used a satellite positioning system to trace the truck to a rest area on Interstate 16 in Georgia. The boyfriend, a trucker with Cannon Express Corp., was hauling light bulbs to a Wal-Mart in Douglas, Ga.

Shaddix, 24, told police that she had hidden a marker in her sock and left more than 30 messages in restrooms from New York to Tennessee.

She was released Wednesday from the hospital.

The truck driver, Shannon E. Jones, 26, of Delhi, N.Y., was charged Wednesday with kidnapping. He has been jailed since Saturday on aggravated assault charges.

Aycock, 70, said he knew the message was for real, and he “wouldn’t want anybody to turn their back on me if I was in that situation.”

Shaddix said she had been with Jones for about 18 months. She said he became abusive two months into their relationship and refused to let her leave.

Cannon President Dean Cannon said the company is cooperating with the FBI, which has asked for records on Jones. He said Shaddix had signed a company form on Jan. 10 authorizing her as a rider in Jones’ truck.