The dungeon next door

The story of those three women held captive at 2207 Seymour Avenue in Cleveland has us all wondering – at what point do you get nosy?

Charles Ramsey, the now-famous neighbor who rescued Amanda Berry, never gave the guy who lived there a second thought until he heard Amanda scream for help.

“I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man’s arms,” said Ramsey.

Mr. Ramsey is not exactly the shy type, but until then he wasn’t curious about why the windows were blacked out, or why the guy never used the front door, or invited anyone in.

So at what point do you get nosy? Maybe when you notice something strange about his daily routine.

“Every morning he had a bag of McDonald’s. He’d park his bus there, leave it running for at least an hour at a time, and he went in the house and came back out.”

That’s Annita Lugo, another neighbor. She decided the food was none of her business, even though it appeared to be a lot for on person. OK then, what about the day her daughters saw something really weird in the man’s yard.

“We look across the street and it’s Ariel. He has a woman. She’s naked and she’s just in the backyard and he like told her, ‘Get down, get down,” the girl said.

The sisters finally told her what they’d seen, but she didn’t call then either.

Most of us figure that unless someone’s yelling for help, what happens in the neighbor’s yard is their business. But the neighbors on Seymour Avenue are having second thoughts about that now.

“You think you know your neighbor, but you don’t know your neighbor,” said one nearby resident.

Neighbors like Juan Perez, who grew up two houses down; Israel Lugo, who was in a band with the suspect; and of course Charles Ramsey:

“You’ve got some big testicles to pull this off bro because we see this dude everyday.”