Police arrested a Texas man on Christmas Eve, who allegedly kidnapped and tortured a woman he met on the Bumble dating app for five days after she refused to have sex with him.
Twenty-one-year-old Zachary Kent Mills from Spring was arrested Thursday and charged with felony aggravated kidnapping after the woman escaped from his apartment. According to court records filed in a Harris County District Court, the woman told authorities that Mills hit her, punched her, allegedly sexually assaulted her, and starved her for five days.
The woman, only identified as J.W, planned a date with Mills on December 24. Mills picked her up from her house, and the two went to his apartment. They met on Bumble and began a romantic relationship, according to a probable cause statement.
When they got to his apartment, Mills tried to have sex with the woman, but she was not feeling it, so she denied his advances. Mills did not take the denial well. As the probable cause statement showed, he began assaulting her immediately. Mills started beating her up and wouldn’t let her leave the apartment.
According to the woman, Mills hit her with a closed fist but eventually got tired and started beating her using a screwdriver handle.
During the five days that Mills held the woman captive, he did not give her any food or water, according to the statement.
The victim found her opportunity to escape when Mills left to go and visit his father. She quickly gathered her clothes and went to a neighboring apartment for help. Responding police said that they found her with both eyes severely bruised, with bite marks and cuts to her nose and throat, and most of her body had severe bruising. She identified her kidnapper to the police using his driver’s license photo.
Mark Herman, Harris County Constable, said that investigators determined that the woman was held captive from December 24 until December 29, when she escaped. Police took her to the hospital, where she was treated for her injuries.
Court records show that police arrested Mills on Friday, December 30, and booked him into the Harris County Jail on Saturday, December 31, on a $50,000 bail. According to Herman, police could level additional charges against him after an investigation into the incident is completed.
The suspect is currently under house arrest and was instructed to stay away from the woman.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Chris Denuna, the suspect’s lawyer, said that Mills did not have a criminal record and was not considered a flight risk.
Denuna said that even though the accusation against his client was pretty bad, the judicial system had to play out. He said that they would enter a not-guilty plea as that was the point of due process and the fact that suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Bumble wrote about the incident, expressing the company’s shock and sadness at the horrible crime. The dating app statement said they blocked Mills from their platform as soon as they heard the allegations against him, adding that they had dedicated a team to law enforcement that would respond to all inquiries from the police.