In horror movies, you often see strange things and think, “That could never happen in real life.” But sometimes, it does.
In a quiet neighborhood in the United States, a house caught fire. Firefighters, paramedics, and police arrived quickly. The windows were nailed shut from the inside, but they broke down the doors and rushed in to put out the flames. What they found inside was something no one expected.
In one of the rooms, they discovered a cage. Inside was a man who barely looked human. He was extremely thin, his skin was pale and unhealthy, and his teeth were rotting. Later, they weighed him—just 29 kilograms.
And he was 32 years old.
Investigators later learned that his stepmother had kept him locked up since he was 11. For more than 20 years, he had been living in a cage. He had no proper food, no way to take care of himself, and was given only two cups of water a day.
The stepmother, 56-year-old Kimberly Sullivan, had made his life miserable from a young age. At first, she refused to feed him properly, making him beg for food from neighbors or search through trash for something to eat. Eventually, she stopped allowing him to go to school, locked him in a closet, and later put him in the cage. At first, she would let him out for a few hours a day, but over time, she stopped letting him out at all.
For years, he had no way to escape. He had no one to help him and no way to call for help. He was trapped, with no idea if he would ever get out.
To finally free himself, he set the fire while his stepmother was away. It was his only chance to escape.
When firefighters found him, he was barely alive. But for the first time in over 20 years, he was finally out of that cage.
