Some really quick thinking on the part of a woman being raped and held hostage saved her life and put a criminal behind bars. At least for a while. After she risked her safety to text a message out, her plan almost came unraveled. Thwarted by common core education.
Held hostage and raped
When workers at the Chipper Truck Café on McLean Avenue in Yonkers saw the additional instructions note from an apparent hostage asking them to call the police, their public school education hadn’t prepared them for such a situation.
Instead of calling the police, they called their boss and asked what they should do. Call the police, the boss replied.
It turned out that a young woman was being “held hostage and raped at a home in Bronx.” She’s safe now because she had the “wherewithal to order a food delivery on an app, with a chilling note pleading for the recipient to call the cops.”
Because that’s not something which can be said with emoticons, the recipients weren’t sure what to do when they got it.
Grubhub note to 'call the police' leads to the rescue of Bronx woman https://t.co/fhBuj3UHZk via @MailOnline
Kemoy Royal, 32, of Pratt Avenue in the Bronx was accused of sexual attacks on two different women— B Gallagher (@Gally66kg) June 22, 2022
It wasn’t unusual for a Grubhub order of a breakfast sandwich and a burger to come in at 5:00 a.m. on a Sunday. The special instructions that came with it were more than they could cope with.
Obviously a hastily written note asking them to have cops deliver the food and “not make it obvious.” Hostage situations are never a joke but employees weren’t sure if they should treat it as one.
Better safe than sorry
Alice Bermejo owns the restaurant, along with her husband. They were thankfully home to take the call when a worker phoned to ask for instructions. The order came up on the screen. When the husband got to the phone and the worker explained the apparent hostage situation, the owner was smart enough to know there’s only one answer. Hang up and call the police.
“They’d seen the note on the order, and they called my husband, said ‘what should we do,’ and he was like, ‘call the police, can’t take any risks, better be safe than sorry,’” Alice relates.
If the note was a hoax, then the police should be the ones to deal with it. If not a hoax, and it wasn’t, time is essential. A minute or two delay could have ended up causing severe distress to the hostage victim. Or worse. Police delivered the order to an address “in the Eastchester section of the Bronx.”
When they got there, they found “a 32-year-old man was holding a 24-year-old woman against her will and sexually assaulting her.” They met online months earlier.
The very first time the hostage agreed to meet in person, the date turned violent. “He wouldn’t let her have her phone, except to order food.” The Chipper Truck Café was located only three and a half miles away. The Bermejo family is thrilled there was a happy outcome. “Just knowing that like, we were there, and that being open 24 hours allowed her to have a way to get help,” Alice Bermejo’s daughter Alicia relates.
According to the police report, the “suspect opened a door, admitting he thought the young woman’s food had arrived. But it was the police.” Kemoy Royal was taken into custody, booked on “a slew of charges including rape, unlawful imprisonment, strangulation, criminal sex act and sexual abuse, among other counts.” It turned out he did the same thing to another young woman days earlier.
