CLEVELAND — With several swipes from the arm of an excavator, demolition began Wednesday morning on the Cleveland house where three women were held captive and raped for a decade. The house was reduced to rubble in less than an hour and a half.
It was torn down as part of the plea deal that forced Ariel Castro to turn over the deed to the house and pay for it to be razed. He was sentenced last week to life in prison plus 1,000 years.
One of the women imprisoned there, Michelle Knight, showed up early Wednesday before the work began. She made a brief statement and released balloons into the air.
“Dear Lord, give the missing people strength and power to know that they are loved,” she said.
Knight said the release of balloons “represents all the millions of children that were never found and the ones that passed away that were never heard.”
