Inset: Justis Barnhouse (Gage County Sheriff's Office). Background: The Walmart where the defendant's girlfriend escaped from his clutches in Beatrice, Neb. (Google Maps).
A Walmart employee in Nebraska helped a woman escape her boyfriend in a harrowing case of domestic violence where he strangled her and prevented her from escaping his control, authorities say.
Justis Barnhouse, 31, has been charged with assault by strangulation and third-degree domestic assault, the Gage County Sheriff's Office announced in a press release. The successful escape occurred on Tuesday.
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The suspect's girlfriend, 16 years his senior, wanted to return to her home in Kansas — Nebraska's southern neighbor — for two days, authorities say. Barnhouse, however, would not let her leave and get her belongings "from the camper," authorities said.
The afternoon of her escape, Barnhouse had strangled his girlfriend "5 to 6 times," she said, and he had taken her cellphone, "which prevented her from calling this incident into law enforcement," according to the sheriff's office.
The pair then went to the Walmart in Beatrice, Nebraska, for an unknown reason — and that's where the girlfriend went into action.
The allegedly victimized woman "was able to get the attention of a Walmart employee" and she "asked the employee to follow her to the bathroom," the sheriff's office said. There, the woman "was able to give the employee information about what had happened earlier regarding the strangulation," and the employee notified law enforcement.
Deputies with the Gage County Sheriff's Office eventually responded to the Diamond T Truck Stop Camper Row on U.S. Highway 77 just north of the Walmart — ostensibly because they had been notified that the couple was traveling there.
Barnhouse was at the filling station, and he was arrested and booked into the Gage County Detention Center.